1 

1 THE SPIRIT WORLD 



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Where and What It Is. 
The Abode of the Departed. 






A Revealment. 






BY J. C. F. GRUMBINE 




Class BTi-j-^ i 

Book Q 7 

Copyright^ l 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



3> ^f v 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 



X X 



Where and What It Is. 
The Abode of the Departed. 

A Revealment. 
BY J. C. F. GRUMBINE 



Published by 

THE ORDER OF THE WHITE ROSS: 

Boston, Mass. 



^ 



^%1 



^Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1909 
By J. C. F. GRUMBINE 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress 

at Washington, D. C. 

Right of translation Reserved. 



/2-3Z 



f?S 



CCLA256062 






.4 



FOREWORD 



I had hoped that my new work on "Spiritualism — The Key 
to the Mysteries" — might have appeared first. As all things 
are wisely ordered, this evidently was not to be. 

The urgent need of sending this simple little book out into 
the world on its mission of cheer was imperative. So al- 
though many notable works of inspiration have been published 
treating of life in the spirit world, yet every fresh revelation 
will be welcome. Millions pass away each year, while as many 
millions ,bereaved, comfortless, inquiring, doubting s ouls, 
remain. 

As a direct inspiration from the messengers on the spirit 
side of life concerning the world in which the departed live, 
and the life they live, this book is a message to those who 
mourn. Not all that there is of the spirit world can be known. 
It is oftenest revealed in terms of dissimilitude and of symbols. 
If certain facts of the life of our departed loved ones can be 
obtained as the mysterious and unknown laws and forces 
operative in such phenomenal work will permit, what more 
can be done? If such revelations transcend our ability to 
understand them, let us not scoff at what does not appeal to> 
us. 



4 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Life is always more, not less, than what we think, and the 
spirit world, like a continent which only the psychic explorer 
is brave enough to seek to discover, will, in due time,be mapped 
out from the trackless wastes of space. God's spirit guides 
our efforts. His love is our companion. 

In the language"T>f Bulwer Lytton we can conclude: "We 
are born for a higher destiny than that of earth, there is a 
realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be 
spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and 
where the beings that pass before us like shadows will stay in 
our presence forever". 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 
Death 

CHAPTER II. 
Life 

CHAPTER III. 
The Location and Geography of the Spirit World . 

CHAPTER IV. 
Destiny 

CHAPTER V. 
Messages from the Spirit World 

CHAPTER VI. 

Conditions and Means of Spirit Communications . . 



CHAPTER I. 

Death. 

4 4 T N my Father's house are many mansions. If it were 
X not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place 
for you." — John 14. 

Death is not oblivion, nor annihilation. This much is ad- 
mitted by modern science. 

Four of the greatest scientists of to-day, Professors William 
Crookes, Alfred Wallace, Sir Oliver Lodge and Camille Flam- 
marion are avowed Spiritualists. They publicly declare that 
science has proven Spiritualism to be a fact. Immortality, or 
the survival of the personal identity after death, is a fact, 
which, more than any other will reshape and redefine the life 
and destiny of mankind. Few realize how solemnly import- 
ant Spiritualism as a revelation is. It staggers the church. 
It signals a revolution which is slowly disintegrating existing 
religious and social institutions. Materialism as a creed is 
dead. Spiritualism reveals the universal law of life which 
takes the sting from death and snatches from the grave its 
victory. 

That God is no respector of persons is fully indicated by 
death, but that he is Love is shown by immortal life, death's 
antithesis. Divinity, as set forth in Universal Religion, has 
never eschewed nor undervalued one single fact, in which the 
immortality of the soul is proven. In truth, from the personal 
it sweeps on to the universal revelation. 

Abnormal and supernormal phenomena of psychology 
point to the same open door through which the spirit of man 
passes to greater achievements. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD T 

The message of Divinity incarnate was ; "I come that ye- 
might have life, and have it more abundantly." The new 
message is "I come that ye might know it." And the Divin- 
ity in humanity, still with so many the unconscious, potential* 
principle, even when they deny its existence and inspiration- 
leads the soul from mortality to immortality! 

Death is itself but the chemical change which causes the- 
human spirit to free itself from the physical form- 
often tortured by pain, to dwell in a celestial (etheric) body 
and world, under a new spiritual condition of life. What* 
really takes place at death is transformation and transmuta- 
tion. The former does not mean glorification, but, what the 
word literally implies, a change merely of form and environ- 
ment. Transmutation suggests and implies, not only evolu- 
tion into a finer and purer state of life, but the passing of the 
gross particles of matter which made up the body for a finer" 
form which the immortal soul needs. A spirit is not better" 
spiritually, or worse, because of death, although physical 
suffering is forever at an end. 

To some the spirit world is heaven, to others it is hell, be- 
cause of the mind — that is — because of psychic (subjective)" 
attractions and attachments not wholly outgrown or master- 
ed. Human love shares with the Divine an exalted andu 
exalting sphere in the soul's earthly and heavenly life. AncL 
so death reveals the open door to immortal life and eternal 
love. 

Spiritualism teaches that the indestructibility of matter i&- 
but the foundation, on which rests, so far as this physical life* 
and universe of ours are concerned, the eternality of spirits^ 
What our present life is to its form and environment, that the 
spirit is to its celestial body and the world in which it lives^ 
One is natural, and as Paul said first, and the other is super- 
natural, that is above, or rather within the natural and 
governing it. This is what Drummond implied in his^state-- 



8 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

ment about natural law in the spiritual world, and spiritual 
Jaw in the natural world. The spiritual is supernatural. It 
is more than the supernatural — it is the life of God. When 
men are God like they are living the spiritual life. 

It is with the spirit and the spirit world that both life and 
death have most to do. As birth is the outer door to physical 
(natural) form, expression and existence, death is the inner 
door to the spirit word. We are spirits now and will always 
be spirits. Immortality is a fact, not because we have bodies 
or minds, but because we are spirits. Were this not so,. 
Spiritualism would not have been possible. If there are 
demons they were once degraded, sinful, debauched human 
beings, and entering the spirit world at death, as spirits, have 
not yet been regenerated, or spiritualized. If there are 
angels, they were once pure, righteous, good, illumined souls 
on earth and now in heaven are angels of a higher rank, are 
still progressing and unfolding in their Divinity. The per- 
sonal devil (the equal of God so called) does not exist, either 
in this or the next life, outside a human form. And heaven or 
...hell are, it is found, objective or subjective states of the mind* 
resulting from spiritual or unspiritual lives. 

These are but a few of the minor revelations of Spiritualism,, 
which a spurious theology and opposing ecclesiastical pro- 
paganda, however powerful and wide spread, cannot destroy. 
The public conscience and spirit of investigation is awakened 
and alert, and ignorance the mother of false teaching, and 
credulity as well as superstition, the father of error, are doom- 
ed. Take Spiritualism from all ethnic religions and what is 
left would have no foundation on which to rest. Christianity 
brought the resurrection or immortality of the soul forward 
as next in importance to regeneration. In fact, Christianity 
as expounded by Paul, proved its claim to being a supernatural 
revelation by the actual resurrection of Jesus as proven by 
.authentic eye-witnesses. And Paul laying much stress on the 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 9 

tfact that we are all heirs to immortality by the very essential 
mature of our being, for we are spirits, logically insisted that 
-unless the soul be immortal, then Christ himself is not risen 
ifrom the dead. 

Death as a condition does not change the nature, nor quality 
•of the soul. The relic of the personality and individuality 
essential for identification, remains the same. As one liquid 
of a peculiar tincture may be removed from one bottle and 
placed in another, so death does not meddle with the life or 
xiature of the soul. The simile, though a crude one, hints at 
what happened at death. Bodies are the coverings of contents 
of superior and superlative value. Etherial bodies of a 
_3*ross (dark) (opaque), or fine (light) (lucid) quality, are the 
coverings, or vehicles of excarnate spirits, through, and by 
which they function and live their lives. Death enables the 
^inferior soul to be worse, if he so chooses, and the superior 
soul to be better, but none are denied the opportunity for 
progressive unfoldment. The same opportunity presents 
dtself here on earth. In a way not easily explained, the ad- 
-vantage in the life to come is on side of the pure, just, noble 
loving, generous, and unselfish. For in the spirit world it is 
•easier to be pure, just, noble, loving, generous, and unselfish 
rafter the terrific struggle with the world, flesh and their 
^material temptations, attractions, and limitations. We are 
what we seem, and seem what we are, for in the spirit world, 
-the aura which surrounds or envelopes a spirit, manifests, 
"without any vehicle of concealment such as the gross physi- 
cal body, exactly the psychic darkness or light in which the 
spirit lives. This, and not the soul's worldly wealth, power, 
knowledge or fame marks Cain from Abel, Adam from Christ, 
,3nd the son of man from the son of God. Thus the state of 
r£he mind reflects and embodies in the forms of excarnate 
spirits what they were and are. 

.Death does not destroy memory, nor conciousness, one a. 



10 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

natural and the other a spiritual asset, but both relative to* 
each other respond as the moon to the sun. Memory is at 
digest of that portion of the consciousness which is covered by 
experience, while consciousness is not only the oracle but the 
content of Divinity. Mind is not more, but less, than the 
consciousness, and is in fact a portion of the consciousness 
reduced to knowledge. THe^min4V or wltart ever passes into,, 
or out of it, whatever is perceived by the ego in the self con- 
sciousness, is preserved in memory. The forms may perish,, 
but the reflections endure, as the record of the soul's being, the 
sacred palimpsest, which is the book of life. This book is the 
soul's sealed judgment opened in eternity, by which we 
stand or fall. Justice demands that we pass sentence, how- 
ever, severe or light, on our own deeds. Therefore, no vicarious 
representation can avail to save a man from himself. He is,, 
if guilty of sin, his own accuser, his actions his own condemn- 
ation. Death does not alter the character of the soul. 

Memory makes it possible for the excarnate spirit to recall 
its earthly life and experiences, and to keep in touch with 
earth's attractions and earth's inhabitants. Half its life 
was on earth, the dip of the semi- circle covered the objective 
world and life, the other half swings within the portals of the 
spirit world, that half of the circle covered by the subjective 
life. The one (the objective) was consciously active; the 
other unconsciously passive: the two make up the man's life,, 
character and destiny. Memory unites the passive (subject- 
ive) when consciously active to the events of the active (ob- 
jective), when it becomes (dead), unconsciously passive. 
This is why the fool says, "one world at a time", failing to- 
realize that his world is but a hemisphere of the whole world,, 
and to live in the world of the senses or the material, blind to* 
or unconscious of the other, is to live like the swine on husks 
of corporiality and corruption. Consciousness is never dual, 
but the mind is, and the ego, a creature of duality, lives in 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 11 

time and space under its own auto suggestion, or hypnosis. 
But memory holds a record which the dead, so called, see with 
terror or pleasure, and this record death does not annihilate. 
If death did or could do this the unity and integrity of the 
soul's life would be destroyed. In memory the soul 
beholds as in a mirror its past life, and this life serves as 
the beginning or basis of a higher, deeper, purer, spiritual 
unfoldment. This is why that life is preserved, no deed lives 
to haunt and punish the soul, but to compel it toward per- 
fection. 

Memory serves a nobler, sublimer purpose in spirit com- 
munion and communication as that great event recorded in 
the life of Jesus when on the Mount of Transfiguration he 
stood before Moses and Elias proves and these prophets ap- 
peared in unmistakable form of the persons whose identities 
could not be questioned . Moses and Elias recalled from memory 
their earth appearances, and with the glory of their spirit- 
ual presence made the fact of their immortality and guardian- 
ship over Christ an impressive episode in the psychic life of 
John, Peter and James who witnessed these patriarchal spirits. 
In a minor, more universal but not less important way, all 
spirits extemporize from memory the facts needed to make us 
attest their identity when appearing to us after their decease 
on earth. If death stripped the soul of the memory of its 
earthly life much that now is demanded for positive proof of 
the immortality of the soul could not be given. As it is, n© 
fact once familiar to the decarnated spirit, and to us, is denied 
it or us, if proper conditions can be had, to recall that test. 
Without memory, this could not be done. 

What is left on earth and decays or is dissipated with the 
dissolution of the body is that function of the soul's life which 
causes pleasure and pain — the sense and nervous system, seat 
of emotional sensibility. The Spirit world and life have 
neither need nor use of it. The spirit employs a system far 



12 THE SPRIIT WORLD 

superior to it, in the delicacy of its mechanism. And truly it 
is as the revelator taught in his vision, that here in heaven 
pain is no more and spirits need not light of sun, moon or 
stars, nor of candles, for the former (natural things) have 
passed away. To be released of the sense thralldom, the 
nerve racking suffering and agony through which we pass in 
our physical existence is a freedom devoutly to be wished, and 
the deliverance ccmes when our work is done. And surely 
the sleep of death, has no terror worse than the fear 
that mortal pain is to be extended into an eternal 
hell, a doctrine conceived by fallen angels and pro- 
pagated by devils on earth — having no material, or spiritual 
existence outside of one's self. Pain is a nerve and a sense 
excitation, and it is unthinkable in spirit. There is no need of 
God continuing it, when nerves and senses are destroyed and 
the spirit has forever vacated the organism, in which pain or 
its opposite are produced. 

When an excarnate spirit, for purposes of identity, re- 
produces forme*- mental states or earthly experiences most pain- 
ful and horrible to recall and delineate through a medium, it 
often does so through another organism, that of a sensitive or 
medium, and he or she is often entranced in order to effective- 
ly portray in realistic tragical accuracy the actual earthly 
condition of the spirit. This the spirit submits to, not to 
please itself, nor because it is now suffering, but because those 
on earth who are near and dear will at once recall the identity 
of the spirit by its agony, as Jesus made the disciples feel his 
wounds in a body extemporized after his death, to prove 
his resurrection or immortality in the actual self same person, 
his identity. If Jesus Christ did this, if he, the Son of God, 
only begotten and beloved of God, was permitted to do this, 
would God's love, mercy or justice deny the same blessed 
privilege or right providentially provided for in our human 
and divine nature and laws from doing the same ? The fact is 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 13 

that Jesus set the example which all loving, ministering and 
obedient spirits have followed since his time. Christian 
apologists and theologians in their zeal to make Christianity 
an inclusive and peculiar revelation, having no divine basis in 
our present existence or foundation in science, have wrenched 
it from the supernormal development of man's life, and made 
it appear a miracle, the result of God's interposition of natural 
and spiritual causality ; whereas it is a fact, explicable by the 
unchanging law of the universe, which makes all men divine 
but only God-like when they unfold Godliness. And that 
which is supernormal, and lies at the core and heart of the 
miracles of alLages is Divinity manifested in men who dared to 
live as sons of God. 

It is certainly true that spirits who have lived a sensuous 
and sensual life, one of materialism and selfishness, cannot 
hope to enjoy, nor do they realize the bliss of those who live 
pure, noble, righteous (spiritual) lives; and they suffer, but 
not physical pain. And here again the memory becomes the 
source of earthly reminiscences and comparative and con- 
trasting conditions of the former earthly life and the life which 
the man ignored or rejected — the life of the saint. But in the 
spirit world, bitter, sad, regretful and remorseful as the con- 
sciousness of one's imperfect and sinful condition may be, the 
opportunity to unfold in the light and power and spirit of God 
is not denied any one, and the debased can rise to undreamed 
of heights, if he chooses or so wills. This is the burden of the 
revelations and messages of spirits who, in reaching their 
brethren on earth, implore them to live pure and holy lives, 
not only because it is best and happiest for them on earth, but 
because it qualifies them for the fullest realization and en- 
joyment of the life immortal or in the spirit world. And as 
heaven or hell are states of the mind, resulting from the lives 
we live, these lives of good or evil, prove to us after death in 
the sphere of eternal life, just how much or how little we loved 



14 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

tfce light, how near or how far from God, we were. Spiritu- 
ality and materiality of the life here and there make the only 
difference between men, whatever their social station, their 
fame, power or wealth on earth. If there is any other ethical 
or spiritual distinction made of the character of the life, 
Christian or pagan, neither the bibles nor recent revelations 
given to the world endorse it. 

Death is the hidden dark way across the inner threshold of 
life. It is the natural withdrawal of the life of the spirit from 
the imperfect and outgrown body, an event similar to the 
withdrawal of the sap from the branches of the trees when 
autumn and winter strike down their leaves and fruit. Death 
is to the body or form, what life is to the spirit. And as 
Dickens truly wrote the "old, old fashion death, that came to 
us in our first garments and will last until each man has run 
his course and the great globe is rolled up like a scroll. But 
thank God all who see it for that older fashion yet of immortal- 
ity. And angels of ministering spirits look not down upon us, 
with eyes quite estranged when the swift river bears us to the 
ocean." 



CHAPTER II 
Lite. 

"Like a tree beside the river 

Of the life that runs from me 

Do I lean me murmuring ever, 

In my love's idolatry. 

Lo, I reach out hands of blessing; 

Lo, I stretch out hands of prayer; 

And with passionate caressing, 

Pour my life upon the air. 

In my ears the siren river, 

Sings and smiles up in my face 

But forever, and forever, 

Runs from my embrace." 

— Gerald Massey. 
So sung Gerald Massey, the English poet, of the life we 
live. What is this life which we possess and enjoy, and 
which so involves itself in our consciousness as to defy analy- 
sis ? We hear of existence and of being, of the material and 
spiritual, of temporal and eternal life. Whence comes life 
which is so compounded with matter, so associated with its 
opposite death, and differentiated in modes and kinds of 
expression and manfestation as to exceed death only in being 
the greater mystery? What did the seer of Israel, Jesus, 
the Christ, mean when he said, "I came that ye might have 
life, and might have it more abundantly" ? To what strange 
mysterious kind or form of life did he ref er,and how was or is it 
related to the human, material, organic life we now live ? 
These are questions rooted in the fundamental problems, with 



16 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

which Spiritualism deals, problems which are greater than any 
problems of physics, chemistry, physiology and psychology. 

If it be said that life is the substance and principle of the 
soul, and cannot be denned or explained by any of its by- 
products, as vitality, breath, locomotion, heat, electricity ,force F . 
strength, sense, consciousness, health, it will be conceded that 
it is still as great a mystery. If we add that life is not produced 
by any co-ordination or correlation of matter and force, al- 
though appearing and acting simultaneously with them, that 
it springs from within the very forms and forces which it uses 
and through which it manifests, a hint of what is implied by 
the words substance and principle may be had. Vitality is- 
the substance of life, as life is the substance of the soul, and 
through the one as through the other, life and its forms 
originate, evolve and pass into existence. This is the new 
theory of science, not widely advocated but embraced by such 
distinguished scientists as Professor William Crookes, Alfred' 
Wallace and Sir Oliver Lodge. In truth, it is the spiritual! 
hypothesis put into simpler language. Without life, there- 
could and would be no need of vitality,the source of generative 
forms. Indeed, life as a principle governs organisims, as life 
as a substance governs forms. That this life, as Gerald. 
Massey hinted, is running away from us, is evidenced by birth 
and death; though it is true as Professor Alfred Wallace 
maintained in his work on "Darwinism", that as many are 
born as die. Still life is always actively changing and moving, 
it is never at rest, it is pouring out into time and back into 
eternity, with an exactitude of motion like the swinging of a 
pendulum. Death nor birth annihilate life, and this is the 
cardinal and universal revelation of Spiritualism. 

Why is life called temporal and material or eternal and 
spiritual ? If the soul is immortal there must be a form^of 
life which the soul itself manifests and which is associated 
with matter or the material world and. involved by destiny in 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 17 

time and space. This form of life, having its seat in the seed 
or vitality, is the basis and cause of generation — in fact, of 
the phenomenal world as we know it through our finer senses. 
It is called temporal and material because it obtains only in 
time and matter. It does not persist or survive on the 
immortal or excarnate side of life. All that belongs to or is of 
matter, remains on earth, stops or halts at the grave or in the 
fire, its dissolution being the end of that form of the soul's* 
life on earth. Nothing material, either in the gross or fine- 
form, can pass through the inner gates of ether. The ether 
itself forever and absolutely prevents intermission or inter- 
penetration of matter through itself. Matter is thus fated and 
conditioned. Even its most volatile gas, hydrogen, must 
cease to be hydrogen to enter the etherial realms. But the 
presistence of force and the indestructibility of matter obtain- 
just the same, despite the limitations placed upon them by 
universal and unchanging law. 

Growth of the forms of life is from within these forms, and 
At the center of life itself. Jesus hinted at this when he said 
"I have meat to eat that ye know not of." Mystically r 
science may never uncover the sublime machinery of the soul, 
by which this growth takes place, as the metamorphosis of a 
seed into the flower and fruit, or of the worm into the butter- 
fly. But as the law of growth destinates life to create and use 
matter by functions automatically set into operation by the 
soul itself, it is not at all strange that life should suggest a 
duality — a temporal and material existence, and an eternal 
and spiritual being. The simplicity and wisdom of the lan- 
guage will appear when one thinks how the soul goes out as 
well as in, looks out as well as in, in short, objectifies as well- 
as subjectifies its life. And the reason for this duality of 
expression is that while the soul can live a material life in a 
spiritual world, or a spiritual life in a material world, it must 
live its life, a life which it chose and destinated, in order to 



£8 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

profit by its experiences and know evil from good, the appear- 
.ances from reality, the spirit adulterated, lost in and ob- 
scured or occulted by form (matter) and the spirit, pure, 
luminous, self existent, eternal. As this is the law of and 
nature of life, the soul finds this dual course inevitable, but not 
•eternal, for the lower yields at last to the higher. Nor does 
its temporal choice, or material life, forever fix or decide its 
ultimate destiny. This false doctrine has long since been 
-exploded, and no revelation in modern times has done more 
to destroy such nefarious doctrine than Spiritualism. Error 
-cannot stand in its clear, transparent, light, and evil, born of 
the darkness, lives only in its shadow. 

The soul passing through the material life is not only 
biological and physiological, it is also psychological, that is, it 
is evolutionary; as such, it is apt to be grossly selfish, and 
always phenomenal in action, and the servant of the law of the 
survival of the fittest, for this law governs it. The soul 
living the spiritual life is immaterial, is not biological, physio- 
logical or pychological, that is evolutionary, but it is divine, 
and its law is not that of self -preservation, but of non-resistance 
.and love. The soul through the ego functioning on the 
material plane, or that of the senses, is likely to become 
obsessed or hypnotized by its own desires; and these desires 
attach and attract it to matter in the sense of art and nature. 
This obsession is so insidious and persistent that it is difficult 
to free or exercise the soul from it. Selfishness is a crude, 
.destructive form of self love, and self love is obsession. The 
love of the world and the flesh is the love of evil and the 
'devil, a word employed to symbolize the impersonation of 
.evil in us. And as all evil comes through generation, so all 
good comes throvtgh regeneration. To be born anew, or from 
above, is to be born of water and fire — that is of spirit in the 
sphere of perfect harmony and equilibrium of life and action, 
symbolized by the double inter-lacing . triangles, or 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 19* 

six pointed star. The spiritual life is not the life of generation 
or the life of passion which inspires gereration, but the life- 
inspired of divine love or unselfishness, or selflessness. In 
short, it is the Christ life, the life of the golden rule. The- 
Christ life of diviua love and unselfishness is more than moral. 
It is purity, truth, justice, mercy, righteousness, peace, alB 
that is comprehended by the will of God. Thus the distinc- 
tion between living a material, temporal, corporial (one world 
at a time) life, and the spiritual or eternal life. There can be* 
no confounding of the material life with the spiritual. If 
one be in the world, yet not of it he is living the spiritual life; 
but if one be in the world and of it, possessed by it, it is a 
material life. We cannot serve two masters, God' 
and mammon! 

Why has Spiritualism come into the world, if not to empha- 
size the fact, that we are now immortal spirits and that to 
appreciate and enjoy this hemisphere of the world and the 
next, we must live spiritual lives, lives which prove, either 
that we have faith or knowledge of the fundamental facts on 
which rests our present and future happiness. Material' 
living, at its best of sensuous pleasures so soon to perish and 
as soon to destroy us by our sacrifice of our vitality for them, 
is hell, literally, fiery and mentally; while spiritual living, even 
in poverty, disease and suffering, is heaven. This is true^ so- 
far as this world is concerned and it is no less true in the next. 

Life as the antithesis of death ends physical poverty,, 
disease and pain. It also ends physical wealth, health and' 
pleasure. 

What does it give at death to the materially or 
spiritually minded ? To the one, the saint, a sphere of light, 
joy, and peace, to the other, the sinner, a sphere of darkness,, 
sorrow and misery! But these spheres are inner, not outer 
are within the soul, not outside of it, are in the same world 
where both reside, not side by side, unless the saint seeks to* 



,20 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

help the sinner out of his darkness, and they by law are fixed, 
but never permanent, for all souls progress,— fixed as each 
continues to love that which creates light or darkness, perma- 
nent in light as God only is light. "Ye are the light of the 
world". "If the light that is in you be darkness ; how great is 
that darkness". The good live in the light, the evil in darkness. 
Darkness is limitation, light freedom. This is heaven and 
hell, as revealed by Spiritualism. 

Life is ever ascending and unfolding its own flowers of 
paradise. All, even the most selfish, evil minded and black 
hearted, will realize and unfold Divinity. It is the will of 
God. Even the light and the darkness contain an infinite 
number of spheres less luminous than or not so dark as the 
purest or darkest. The soul sooner or later will seek the 
light, because in it alone rest and peace are found. Whatever 
may be the outer conditions and inner states of the soul, no 
condition or state is so dark or remorseful but in it is the germ 
of Divinity, out of which the spirit will emerge, purine i and 
glorified. This is the message of the excarnate spirits who 
communicate with mortals. And one need but reflect upon 
.the enormous and world wide significance of this revelation to 
mankind to realize how the foundations of the Catholic and 
Protestant Churches are being shaken as by an earthquake 
.and their clergy are warned in time, before their ecclesiastical 
systems of theology, with their cathedrals and churches 
.gradually slip away into oblivion. Even now deep rumblings 
are heard in the land. For error is doomed, whether cloaked 
under the names of a pretentions religion, or advocated in the 
name of the Church of Rome. 

Life is more than meat, shelter or raiment. All these 
things may seem, and are necessary and important to a mortal 
but each one is warned not to allow himself to become hinder- 
ed in his spiritual growth or obsessed by them, so that he lays 
-up no treasures in the spheres which are immortal. For what 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 21 

a man possesses here he is, and this is not a paradox. "As a 
man thinketh so he is." Whatever a man loves that his life, 
thought, possessions show and prove. And since material 
wealth cannot, in any form, slip into the next world, although 
the spirit of the man who is a miser, or a glutton can and will, 
the soul, thus enslaved and debauched, more naked in fact 
than the baby born into this world, will awaken there to a 
darkness in which our starless, moonless, lightless night is but 
a faint comparison. And this utter and outer darkness, now 
conceived in no sense of fear, terror or pain, will terrify and 
curse the soul, more than its wealth did ever please or satisfy. 
This, too, is the message of the spirit world to the man of 
affairs, the large or small minded business man, to whom 
business and the accumulation of monev. is his only ambition 
or object in life. One word will describe his soul life on the spirit 
side, it is desolation. Charity, or the giving of large sums of 
money at death, like death bed repentances, are good only as 
they are prompted by or inspired of a pure, unselfish heart, 
and avail no one when selfishy done! What a soul is spiritu- 
ally is of moment here and there, so let no one be deceived, or 
deceive himself by indulgences. 

And here the word culture which is often used to define a 
superficial life, an ethical form which is a veneer, is only con- 
sequential as it is both intellectual and spiritual. Intellectu- 
ality is not spirituality, and good taste and social refinement, 
excellent in themselves often pass as popular substitutes for 
spirituality. They should never be mistaken for spirituality. 
Nor is a moral life as good as a spiritual life, but it is better, if 
that comparative word can be thus used, than a sensual or 
material life. A moral life is a passive acquiescence to social 
rules which are good civic form and custom, but are often as 
honored, if not more honored, in the breach than in the ob- 
servance. Morality is an intellectual utilitarianism, but 
spirituality is born of spirit and inspires one to live a pure, 



22 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

noble, just, honest, life, not because it pays or because virtue 
is its own reward, true as both are, but because it is the divine 
law. Morality is but half a truth, and, if founded only on 
custom or if it has no deeper foundation than the moral senti- 
ment, is not apt to inspire one with its authority as a guide to 
conduct, or with its Divinity. 

Spiritualism teaches that the inner, spiritual life is every- 
thing, and not our consent to social customs or intellectual 
systems of culture, which under the name of an old or new 
humanism are at most, as is evidenced in civilization, but a 
refined selfishness and animalism. 

Nor is Spiritualism peculiar or unique in this religious teach- 
ing. It is the kernel or essence of all ethnic religions, whose par- 
ables allegories, ritual and teachings embody and reveal this 
one, central truth or principle of action. 

So in dealing with temporal and material life one must 
never forget that life is divine and because divine, it rests with 
each one to keep it pure. To the extent or degree that life is 
overshadowed and debauched by sensualism or intellectualism, 
by selfish, personal aggrandizement and pleasures, and the 
light obscured and occulted by the love of material things for 
themselves alone, can one determine his sphere in the spirit 
world. Faith, credulity, belief, prayers alone count for noth- 
ing. What one loves and lives and is, is everything. 

Death does not destroy life. It takes the form or masque 
from the soul, that we may see and realize its life more fully. 
What if the darkness in us be so dark that life is less radiant 
there than it is here, because of the use we made of it ? Who 
will be to blame ? No one will blame another but himself. To 
live our own lives may be necessary and inevitable, but of 
greatest, eternal importance is it to live the spiritual or divine 
life, as it alone is eternal. It is the life of blessedness and 
peace. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Location and Geography of the Spirit World. 

"Without the spiritual, observe, 

The natural's impossible, no form, 

No motion; without sensuous, spiritual, 

Is inappreciable, no beauty or power; 

And in this two fold sphere, the two fold man, 

(For still the artist is intensely a man) 

Holds firmly by the natural to reach 

The spiritual beyond it, fixes still 

The type with mortal vision to pierce through 

With eyes immortal to the ante- type 

Some call the ideal, better called the real ; 

And certainly to be called so presently 

When things shall have their names. 
* * # * # 

Every natural flower which grows on earth 
Implies a flower upon the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blooming causes, not so far away, 
But we whose spirit sense is somewhat cleared 
May catch at something of the bloom and breath, 
Too vaguely apprehended, though, indeed, 
Still apprehended, consciously or not, 
And still transferred to picture, music, verse, 
For thrilling audient and beholding souls." 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
f So far as the revelations of Christianity are concerned 
nothing definite is known of the hereafter or the abode of 



24 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

excarnate spirits, called the spirit world. It is true that 
Jesus told his disciples and the multitude of his followers that 
in his Father's house are many mansions, but few indeed, even 
of the most liberal and adventuresome theologians dared to 
teach that these mansions were, or are literally homes of the 
soul, very similar to the homes mortals occupy on earth, but 
not, of course, buildings made by hands, or of material sub- 
stance as brick, wood, iron or stone, but homes just the same 
and more substantial than those of earth. Paul hinted at 
this when he said we have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands eternal in the heavens. 

Speculation as to the location of the heavens, or the spirit 
world, has recognized universally the regions around and above 
the earth, that is, the space circumventing the earth from its 
surface outward within a distance of five miles as the lower 
region of the spirit world, or the underworld of the spirit, (not 
hell) , called sheol in the Bible, and astral or kama loca in The- 
osophy. Beyond this distance covered by the earth's attenu- 
ated atmosphere is the second or middle heaven, (not purga- 
tory) ; and beyond this, the first heaven, (called third heaven 
by Paul) called devachan, or the abode of the angels. These 
zones cannot be measured by exact mileage. 

The substance out of which both the bodies, buildings, gar- 
ments, the flora and fauna of the spirit world is composed is 
the ether, mother substance, the very soul of matter as matter 
is understood on earth. And it can readily be perceived by 
the more intuitive and illumined souls of earth, that since 
ether interpenetrates matter, is the mother or soul of it, and 
conceals itself and all that belongs to it from the physical 
sense of touch, sight, smell, taste and hearing, yet is closer to 
matter (because within), than our spirits are to our bodies, 
God has not made intercommunication between the world of 
ether and matter prohibitory or impossible. Our ignorance, 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 25 

fear and prejudice alone are responsible for the little the inhab* 
it ants of the earth know of the spirit world. 

That the word mansion does not alone refer to the astro- 
logical houses of twelve mansions may be inferred from the 
broad teaching of Chapter 14 of Saint John, from which the 
passage was taken. And yet, there is no question but that 
all minor mansions swing within the influence of the power of 
the planets as they whirl on their orbits through the twelve 
constellations or celestial houses, affecting each one according 
to his geometrical relationship to them and his life as operated 
under them. As it is above, so it is below, is true of the soul 
in all of its expressions and manifestations, but not always 
in the same form or degree, that is, quality or influence and 
similarity of result. However, the three divisions of the 
heavens out among the stars, yet touching the earth on its 
circumference and remaining as the psychic counterpart of it, 
under the same law, are closer to the earth than most persons 
are taught to believe. And not only does modern Spiritual- 
ism teach this but advanced astronomers as Cammille Flam- 
marion and Professor Larkin of Lowe Observatory are fast 
recognizing such doctrine as most likely and natural. 

The nature of the ether is not known by science. It is the 
element of elements and contains within itself the power to 
unite and disperse its units and integrity. When this is 
comprehended much more will be said of, and done with, the 
ether than is said of, or done with electricity, one of its by- 
products. Matter is the body of the ether, and when forms 
are dissolved, that is, perish, that which holds them in solu- 
tion as seeds of other and later seasonable manifestations and 
growths, is the ether. This Spiritualism will yet prove, when 
the time arrives ! There is a time and place for everything 
under the sun. 

Geographically the spirit world, with its three zones, swings 
daily around with the earth on its axis and annually with the 



26 THE SPRITT WORLD 

sun on its orbit. And these zones of the spirit world are no 
more affected by this diurnal and yearly motion than is the 
earth itself. The third heaven of Paul, the first in our 
order, is not influenced by the earth's orbit. These zones 
are not separated from each other by parallels, but they unite 
as gases which chemically fuse with each other, and yet each 
one is distinct. 

For lucidity, it can be said that the first zone, nearest the 
surface of the earth, is the abode of earth bound spirits, spirits 
whose ideals in life, if they had any at all, were very low and 
whose spiritual development was exceedingly limited. They 
embody the dynamics of evil, and because within the gross, 
earthly attractions, they seek to obsess mortals. These 
spirits are recruited from all classes, and dwell in the darkest 
planes and are themselves without any radiating light. They 
are not lost souls; such nowhere exist or if they do, they are 
the supernormally insane, laboring under the hypnosis of 
criminal teaching, from the terrible effects of which the more 
enlightened and luminous spirits, who minister to them, are 
daily seeking to lift them. These places are cold, barren, 
bleak, unsympathetic, corresponding to their actions on earth, 
and while justice so decrees causes and effects to follow each 
other, and the bad and the good do not escape this law, i.his 
is their punishment, or rather the correspondent of their own 
actions on earth. The higher/purer, brighter, spirits see their 
deplorable plight and by their glory and love seek to elevate 
and reform them, appealing consciously to the divine spark 
still burning within them, and inspiring remorse or repentance 
which precedes a longing for the better life above. 
. It is a missionary work, most beneficient and divine, which 
the spirits of the second and third zone engage in, when not 
otherwise employed.* 

* For exact testimony on this subject consult the work "Margherite 
Hunter", found in the National Library, at Washington, D. C. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 27 

The second zone is occupied by familiar spirits, those dear 
ones who are summoned to vacate their places in the homes 
and who, whatever their age, find rest from labor, freedom 
from pain, violence, poverty, decrepitude, disease and insan- 
ity, a ad a release from deformed bodies, in which the struggle 
for existence made their lives a long sad requiem. 

They are called familiar spirits because they still have inter- 
ests in their home, they still love their children, wives, hus- 
bands, parents, relatives and friends, from whom they were 
summarially called, and are occupied in some earth attractions 
and find a special work to do, in inspiring, guiding and com- 
forting their nearest and dearest friends, although, as is often 
the case, so few of those left behind even give them a second 
thought, having been taught in the church that they are 
asleep in their graves, or are forever silenced. It is sad, ever 
tragical, from the spirit side of life, to see a mother hover over 
her children, often orphaned and left in the almost helpless 
care of some public institution, where little love or sympathy 
is bestowed upon them, although their bodies are fed, clothed 
and housed and yet meet with no response from these little 
ones to her caresses and appeals ; or to see a wife or husband 
linger for months, keeping the daily and nightly vigil by the 
side of the earth companion, while he, unconscious of the 
spirit presence, never so much as offering a kiss or a caress to 
the spirit, so soon forgotten, the spirit recalling the protesta- 
tions of their love on earth when both were united, and which 
rang through heaven " death cannot dampen or end my devo- 
tion." Alas, such implicit love of two separated companions 
is rare, and is usually experienced only once or thrice in a gen- 
eration. Or, think of an earth mother who, in an effort to 
save her son from a* drunkard's grave finally dies of exposure 
after following him about the cold, icy streets of a city, plead- 
ing with him to return to her , to his sick but abandoned wife 
and starving children; after death as a spirit still ministering 



28 THE SPRIIT WORLD 

to him, seeking to evoke the angel in him and to have him 
mend his ways, to renounce himself and be a loving husband, 
a kind, provident father! And yet year after year to hear 
ascending to her sphere his curses offered for her blessing 
and at last to watch him starve his children, murder his wife 
and die a criminal on the gallows. Are these facts ever 
solemnly considered by the mass of mankind, who go about 
their business, never seriously troubling themselves about 
that mother, wife and children, who as son, husband and 
father outraged God's law and paid the penalty with his life ? 
Spirit will not down and will love to the end, until the mother, 
son, wife and children are again united as a happy family by a 
love, wisdom and power, which baffles man's knowledge to 
comprehend. 

The familiar spirits are the dear, precious links in life's end- 
less chain of human love and devotion, and they, (not time) 
heal all our wounds, made by death. What would our earth 
be without the company of these blessed evangels of glad 
tidings, who as on the Easter morning long ago, brought word 
to Mary Magdalene that Christ is risen and that they, his 
people and disciples should not look for, or seek, him among 
the dead. They are near enough to the earth and its life, 
interests, loves and attractions, to know how to minister to the 
bereaved, and if the bereaved only knew of their presence, 
even though they cannot sense them, this would inspire in 
them that passive, receptive attitude toward them, which 
would furnish them in most cases, with positive assurances of 
their identical presence, some receiving messages by inspiration 
or direct writing, flowers, raps, or even hearing their voices and 
seeing their shining faces and luminous forms. For this is an 
experience, to be sure, not common, but usual with those who 
are loving, sympathetic, sensitive enough to act upon such 
knowledge. 

Since the preaching of the Rev. Dr. Raupert to the noviti- 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 29 

ates, clergy, bishops and archbishops of the Roman Catholic 
church by special consent of His Holiness, the present Pope, 
that Spiritualism is a fact which none but the ignorant can 
deny, that the church must no longer ridicule it but admit its 
Tiiracles, that these psychical but abnormal phenomena have 
always been known to exist within the church, the ordinary 
scoffer and doubter will now sit up and take notice. And 
while this eminent divine who speaks authoritatively for the 
church admits the facts, yet in a sense disclaims that they are 
the works of the devil, (a doctrine long since exploded and 
only used by the priest to forestall knowledge and keep the 
ignorant still superstitious), he does hold that they are the 
operations of lost souls. The doctrine of lost souls as a theory 
of Spiritualism is new and novel, and the only argument 
against it is the beneficence of the facts themselves. If the 
so called lost souls can produce such extraordinary and in 
most cases beautiful works, for ninety-nine percent of the 
phenomena of Spiritualism are good and helpful, why cannot 
the elect or saved do the same ? And if the lost souls are 
letting us hear from them and their messages are pure, loving 
and honest and come to all who seek as from their own loved 
ones, does the Rev. Dr. Raupert mean to infer that these 
loved ones are lost souls, in plain hard words, the damned r 
and are these messages lies ? What does he know more than 
other and equally learned men as Sir William Crookes F. R. S. f 
Professors Alfred Wallace, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Hyslop, 
Professors Lombroso and Flammarion, all spiritualists who 
declare Spiritualism to be a revelation and the phenomena to 
be efforts of the spirit world, of your father, mother, 
brother, sister, child, relative and friend, to reach you and to 
tell you they still live and love you and that death does not 
destroy them or commit them to a literal hell or heaven, as the 
church, so enthusiastically, erroneously pitilessly, cruelly 
taught ? The worst enemy the Catholic Church has is Spiritu- 



30 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

.alism, as the worst enemy the the Protestant church has is 
Christian Science, and as "truth" crushed to earth will rise 
again, Spiritualism is here to stay, until men led by reason and 
convinced by facts will accept only the truth! That com- 
municating spirits are not all evil, for who is perfect here on 
-earth even up to the moment of death, (less than one tenth of 
one per cent are living pure, honest lives), nor all good, is a 
sure evidence that they are human; and that the burden of 
their communications is to help us live purer, better, less 
selfish lives, in further evidence that they are our familiar 
rspirit friends!* 

The third zone distant from the earth, but interpenetrating 
the other two, is the celestial, and is the abode of the angels of 
the earth. This is the third heaven which Paul saw when he 
was clairvoyant or entranced. It is made up of luminous ether 
.-so pure, that the eye hath not seen, nor ear heard of the un- 
speakable glory of those who dwell in it. These intelligences 
dictate the conditions for the advancement of those who live in 
the lower spheres and have their administering spirits who are 
guides, guardians and messengers to their evangels on earth. 
The space occupied by this zone is that which geographically 
lies outside the earth's attraction toward the sun, held to the 
^earth by a tender cosmic influence but still influencing the earth 
: spiritually and not materially. As there are familiar spirits who, 
having out-grown all earthly experiences, and are serene and 
peaceful in their spheres of love and life, shine with a bright, 
white light like unto the angels, so there are angels who reach 
down to those beneath them and become helpers to those who 
-seek for the fuller life and clearer light of God. And these 

* Recently the Pope held a seance with Joan of Arc, an excommuni- 
cated member of the Roman Catholic Church once declared a lost sou*. 
whom the church burned at the stake because she refused to recant her 
Spiritualism and she is now accepted as worthy of saintly beatification. 
.Such is the consistency of the church. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 3i 

spirits who shine like the sun, but their ineffable glory is from 
within and is the result of their unfolded and unfolding Divin- 
ity, which is indeed the flower of Heaven, the white rose of 
eternal love, live in devachan, a word used by Theosophists to 
define the celestial abode of angelic intelligences. Seldom do- 
earth's children come in direct touch or communication with 
them. They reach the earth through happy, harmonious 
intermedia. 

These three zones in the spirit world hold all who have ever 
lived and who ever live on the earth. And when the soul 
dies, that is. vacates the form it used to vibrate or express its 
life on an inner, psychic plane, it, according to its spiritual,, 
and not material development, enters one of these three zones. 
The soul on earth is closer and nearer to matter and the 
earth than it ever will or can be in subsequent incarnations. 
It there is, broadly speaking, five hundred or more years be- 
tween family and ethnic incarnations, for we go to the other as 
we come to this world in companies or troops of souls, the 
family reunions will be a sweet, loving feature of the home 
making as well as coming. And each one, in the spirit world, 
will have the opportunity to satisfy its love, however human 
and however cruelly short that love was on earth, im 
a union and companionship beyond the grave where love is all 
there is to living and where life fulfills itself in a bless- 
ed apotheosis of marriage, spiritual and celestial, rather than 
"sensuous,, terrestrial in both conception and realization. 

Since these zones synchronize with the life of man on earth r 
and follow planetary law, they necessarily involve themselves 
in the time and place of the activities of those millions now 
scattered all over the surface of the earth. Thus by the law of 
affinity, also called attraction, these zones are the life and 
idealization of the work and life of humanity, and down into 
human life as threads fron. celestial shuttles, unseen to mortals 
drop tender, magnetic inspirations and vibrations called 



32 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

vortices of love, into the warp and woof of human souls which 
sustain and perpetuate the life of mankind. These lines of 
force or attraction can be seen only by those who are advanced 
in their psychic and spiritual unfoldment. Under these in- 
fluences mankind seems to be at a bal-masque. Man appears 
i:o be an automaton or puppet, moving about in a definite, in- 
telligent manner, inexplicable and of doubtful consequence to 
liim, yet fulfilling a law of life which the wisest on earth do not 
yet clearly comprehend. Cities, towns, villages, migration, 
emigration and travel, social, religious and educational move- 
ments, party and sectarian struggles, civilization itself, with 
its extremes of wealth and poverty, health and disease, knowl- 
edge and ignorance, power and weakness, virtue and crime, 
-all spring into existence, take their place in the natural order, 
fulfill their purpose and pass under cover of death, to be 
followed by similar pheomena in the great world struggle! In 
the spirit wo^ld these mysteries are cleared up. The unknow- 
able is made known. Tlv~ trump card is at last dealt! The 
joker and not the ace,the fact or truth ridiculed and ignored, 
the stone which the builder rejected and not the finely 
polished marble or the delicate lacey coral, will be the cap- 
stone to complete our knowledge ! Why is this ? It is the 
law! And it is the law of life and love that he who humbleth 
himself will be exalted, as the last will be made first in divine 
irank. Power, fame, honor, wealth on earth, unless spiritual, 
means weakness, ignominy, disgrace, want on the spirit side! 
It matters not where we live or reside, in whatever geographi- 
cal part of the globe, by our life here and now, we determine 
the zone we enter at death. Let us not be deceived by passion 
or procrastination. 1 ight and love are ex. messed only by 
the pare mind and heart. Wisdom is the end, love the crown 
of life et . j rnal ! 



CHAPTER IV. 

Destiny. 

"There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it 
he now, 'tis not to come ; if it be not to come, it will be now, if 
it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." 

■ — Shakespeare. 
The Cross. 
I 

""I made the cross myself whose weight 
Was later laid on me ; 
This thought is torture as I toil 
Up life's steep calvary. 

II 
"To think my own hands drove the nails! 
.1 sang a merry song, 
And chose the heaviest word I had, 
'To build it firm and strong. 

Ill 
If I had guessed — if I had dreamed 
Its weight was meant for me, 
I should have made a lighter cross, 
To bear up calvary." 

— Annie B. Aldrich* 
"We are no more than a moving row 
Of magic shadow shapes that come and go 
Round with the sun-illumined lantern held j 

Day and night by the master of the show: 
There was a door to which I found no key ; 



54 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

There was a veil past which I could not see ; 

Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee 

There seemed — and then no more of Thee and Me." 

The very word destiny startles one, because it is the most 
painful, mysterious, dissatisfying word in all literature. How 
little we know of it. How little most persons think is to be 
known of it. If suggests fate, an unavoidable, inexorable, 
absolute decree, seemingly forced upon us, from 
which no one seems able to escape. It compels one along a 
path, in which one does not always care to go and in which one 
does not always find his agreeable work or happiness. It is 
bound up in almost inpenetratable mystery. 

Fate implies as the word signifies by derivation what has 
been said or spoken — which must be done. Destiny is sup- 
posed to be fate carried to its logical conclusion — the extreme 
end of action — the end of all action, — of the end itself. 

Who, or what absolute power is it that speaks so unquestion- 
ably, and unanswerably, that all must obey and do whatever 
is decreed ? Is it Divinity or the stars which fix our fate, 
which orders our destiny, or is it the fortuitous combination of 
circumstances ? Is it ordained from the beginning, from the 
foundation of the world, to use scriptural language ? Or is it 
our subliminal, higher selves which direct us ? When Shakes 
peare wrote, "There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough 
hew them as we may", what did he mean ? Is there a power 
outside of, or within our own wills that controls us, or are our 
lives rather the result of karma, of causes and effects not under- 
stood, in which the sovereignty of God and our own freedom 
seem often to clash, but in which the wisdom and omnipotence 
of God make prevision and provision for our own every action 
and our lives, so that we can do as we choose, yet be finally 
glad to say, "Thy will not mine be done", when the God in 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 35 

man becomes the man in God, — the only operating will wise 
enough to be omnipotent ? 

The ancient canonical, theological tradition which the wise 
men taught under the name of astrology, or theosophy, or God 
wisdom, declared that the planets influenced and ordered our 
lives by synchronizing their movements and their powers with 
the soul's life or actions on the earth, so that man was free only 
to the extent that he lived true to whatever his birth indicated 
in planetary aspects, called his horoscope ; in other words, the 
life ordained or preordained by karma and election made in a 
previous world, or life of causes. This karma and choice 
which conditioned a man's present destiny extended not only 
into the spirit world but to a pre-existence on earth, to other 
lives lived before under other or different conditions, environ- 
ments, personalities and names. Strange as this may seem, 
.ancient astrology, or theology, was as exact a science as 
mathematics and indicated in a horoscope the destiny of a 
nation, or a single soul. The modern clap trap which passes 
current under the name and is in vogue in every large city, and 
is consulted on business and speculation, is a perversion and 
relic of the ancient teaching, and, in most cases, cannot be 
relied upon. The point made here is that the old magi knew 
that astrology was esoteric, their theology or religion, and so 
they never mixed it up with business or money making, or 
separated it from the most sacred uses! The popular con- 
demnation of the astrologers and the odium and disgrace, in 
which the modern science is held today, grows out of the 
secularization and prostitution of this once sacred science. To 
consult the stars about horse racing, the stock market, mar- 
riage and divorce and the thousand affairs of life, which 
conscience and reason, enforced by one's experience alone 
.should be the guide, is to force the astrologer into error and 
nis science into disrepute. And when the astrologer tells his 
client that the stars can indicate certain sinister conditions, or 



36 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

obstacles which, if an expert of the science of astrology be 
consulted in time, can be overcome and removed, is to state a 
falsehood, which has proven so again and again. 

Destiny admits of no tampering. It indicates no possible 
escape from the course which whether we chose it or not is 
inevitable. And while there is always in every life the pre- 
sumption that we may do a certain thing, and yet when the 
time comes for action we do the opposite, it is not because 
astrology showed the way to such initiative or inspiration of 
behavior, but because it could not of necessity be otherwise. 
It was to be. 

And here the subject of destiny can be grouped under three 
heads, in the form of three positive affirmations which will be 
fully explained. 

I. Whatever is to be will be. 2. Whatever is, is right. 3. 
Whatever is, is best. 

These aphorisms are not easy to accept or comprehend, but 
if one begins by accepting natural or spiritual law as governing 
the universe and all life in it, and we accept the verdict of 
science that this law admits of no change, suspensions or 
divine interpositions, ^nen the logical conclusion is forced 
upon us, that omniscience and omnipotence must be uni- 
versally and always present in the operations of that law, and, 
therefore, error and evil, as popularly understood must be 
given a new, revised and more intelligent definition. On this 
premise rests the question of the sovereignty of God in the 
execution of eternal, universal right, and the free will of man, 
in the execution of individual, personal rights, and on this 
same premise is established the question of human destiny. 

Fate, therefore, may be acknowledged to be the operation of 
natural and spiritual causality, in which we as mortals or im- 
mortals live, while destiny is our conscious living of the life 
which fate reveals. Fate is the plan, destiny in our working 
out of that plan. 



THE vSPIRIT WORLD 37 

If law rules everything in the universe, from a corpuscle of 
electricity to the galaxy, it is clear that whatever is to be will 
be; for it is the same as saying that what now is is the result 
of law, the unfoldment, manifestation or expression of a 
potential life or plan involved in effects and causes, which were 
once operative because primary, while the secondary or 
resultant causes and effects are now active. It shows that 
God, or the supreme, omniscient intelligence never guessed at 
or speculated on anything, the future or the might have been. 
Omniscience knows the beginning, middle and end of life. 
There are no "ifs" about Divinity. We may not now know or 
we may be ignorant ; we may wish to revise our lives and plans: 
or seriously to live over a past which now is irretrievably and 
irrevocably dead, because of a foolish, wasteful, sinful, criminal 
career. This is impossible with God. His will is absolute, 
his law perfect, his omniscience infallible. So that evolution 
of nature and human" life and the slow dawn of the conscious- 
ness of our Divinity and eternality, are all the workings of law,, 
whether past, present or future, whether conceived in a single 
or natural life, or whether made to cover murder, theft, adul- 
tery or blasphemy or to reveal the blissful serene state of the 
pure in heart, the saint and the angels. 

And here the second, positive affirmation must be consider- 
ed, "whatever is is right", a thought made popular by Pope 
in his essay on man. Hear what Pope has to say : — * 

Cease then, nor order imperfection name. 

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. 

Know thy own point : This kind, this due degree, 

Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee. 

Submit — In this, or any other sphere, 

Secure to be as blest as thou canst fear : 

Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, 

* Read "Essay on Man" by Pope, for the full Argument. 



38 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. 

All nature is but Art, unknown to thee; 

All chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; 

All discord, Harmony not understood, 

All partial evil universal Good : 

And spite of pride, in erring reasons spite, 

One truth is clear, 

Whatever is, is Right." 

No attempt will here be made to reconcile the seemingly 
irreconcilable, nor to enter each one's personal life and ex- 
plain why certain experiences, which seemed undeserved and 
unjust, should have been possible. A little more wisdom and 
less egotism, a little more love and less bitterness, a little more 
of human sympathy and less of selfishness, a little deeper 
knowledge of the spirit and spiritualization of life itself, will 
show one why we suffered or had such a deplorable lot, why 
that terrible experience crossed our path and we of all others 
were singled out of millions to bear the cross up calvary. This 
and more will be made clear in time, or eternity, — for we 
must reckon with the life after death and before birth, 
in order to know the reason for destiny. 

It can be said, however, that we are called upon to pass 
through no experience which do not belong to us, and which 
we have not invited. Strange and not always complimentary 
to our pride, or view point, or station in life, the obstacles 
which we encounter, the ordeals through which we pass, the 
bitter, terrorizing and agonizing steps we take in our dark 
pathway, the moments of dread and suspence between de- 
bauchery and a worse fate, — suicide, or murder, — come not 
because ordered by the Divine will, but because we literally 
chose them. We chose the kind of life, which entailed upon 
us these experiences. True, had we known better in the 
light of what happened, the penalty and disgrace inflicted, 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 39 

perhaps the course never would have been taken. We did 
not perhaps could not fully know! The course was taken, it 
seemed inevitable; the results followed. We are not damned 
nor eternally lost because of our fate, but we are asked and 
inspired to be wise next time. In fact, the very experiences 
which we endured made us wise, that is, willing to do better 
and live purer lives. And to the question, "Do you mean to 
say that such conduct was right", eternally right? No? 
Pope did not, we do not mean that. But relatively right, yes, 
because the only alternative left, when we refuse to follow 
conscience or listen to reason, and in our own insanity become 
criminally guilty and irresponsible. All crime is insanity, all 
criminals insane, and whatever may be the ruling of society 
and the state in the name of the majesty of the law, — an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, — the insane or irresponsible 
are not guilty before God, although they are found guilty before 
v an .The error, the sin, the guilt, the remorse for the deed, remain. 
This can be atoned for or washed away, not by the sacrificial 
blood of a savior, but by repentance, forgiveness, enlightment, 
self conviction and renunciation and living of the spiritual 
life. This is not an easy thing to do, but it must be done; the 
conversion or reform must be spiritual and radical, before 
freedom from the offence and peace before God are obtained. 
It is true that such an act of violence may never again be 
committed. It served to end man's pleasure in sin or sensuous 
pleasure. He gradually brought upon himself the state of 
mind, in which murder was inevitable. Any criminologist, 
or psychologist, by an examination of his mind at the time 
when such occult thoughts were seething in his brain could 
have seen how he was drifting. Spirits foresaw the end. He 
would not listen to advice, nor take counsel from his superiors. 
He became defiant; He lost his balance. The end or climax 
came like a flash of lightning from a seemingly clear sky, al- 
though the dark clouds had been gathering thick and fast, 



40 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Death by electrocution or hanging ended his inglorious life. 
Why is not divine law suspended to save him? Ask why the 
natural law is not suspended to save a ship load of souls from 
going down to sea in a gale, a theatre filled from pit to dome 
with thousands of innocent victims from being destroyed by 
fire, an earthquake from decimating helpless humanity or 
other natural cataclysms of flood, pestilence, famine, from 
bringing ruin upon homes, property and human lives? The 
moial is evident, although the reason is not always clear. Is 
it cruel and unreasonable to think that souls who pass into the 
spirit world go by the death which is best, the one which pleas- 
ed them and harmonized with the life they lived ? This is 
bitterly true ! None of us are forced into any conscious action 
which is not normally and supernormally a phase of our 
destiny, an act which by the very fact that we do it, holds us, 
and indicates to us that we chose it and are responsible for it. 

Blame and praise for actions belongs to a popular code of 
morals which attaches an egotistic importance or value to one 
act and not to another, or weighs or measures actions by the 
false standard of comparative and superlative ethics, — good, 
better, and best, — whereas there is as Shakespeare wrote, 
'"Nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." We have 
:all played cards. How amusing and what a source of satis- 
faction, often accompanied by loud and boisterous laughter, 
when we win the game. And yet, playing cards is a game in 
which personal egotism and ignorance of law boast of and 
rejoice over a victory which fate alone ordered. There is no 
superior intelligence in playing a game of cards. The one who 
wins was ordained to win. Somehow it happened as it did, 
when he and the other players were the least conscious of the 
result. But had the players been clairvoyant, the result 
would have been known before they played. Indeed, the 
seer who could enter the lives of the players when they did not 
know each other, when they were children, could have told 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 41 

them of this episode in their life, how one day they would 
meet at a certain place and at a special time and play a game 
of cards. A certain one whose name could have been spoken, 
would win. But this sort of thing seems a long way from the 
public mind, and quite impossible and foolish to even imagine. 
However, Spiritualism proves that "whatever is, is right." 

Do not be so silly or insane as to remark that if this were 
so anyone would, or might commit crime and apologize for it 
by saying, "it is right". If he committed crime it was right, for 
he did it, and he became responsible for the causes which led 
up to it, but it is not eternally right and neither he nor any 
other would go so far as to claim that. Nor because one 
commits a crime is it at all probable that another would be 
justified in doing so. Suggestion, obsession and the law of 
attraction show that many commit the same kind of an act 
within a short interval of time, but each one is found to be 
guilty of the train of thoughts which led to the lives which, 
made such similar and almost synchronous crimes inevitable. 
It is not claimed that those who commit crime deliberately 
choose to do so, for if the criminal class is without exception 
insane, choice of such an act at the time and under the cir- 
cumstances would be quite impossible, and therefore, there 
could be no responsibility. And when fate decides their 
destiny, and the choice of expression of the life or the career as 
it is usually spoken of is determined, whether in the spirit 
world before the present incarnation, or by a series of events 
and causes which made the choice possible, it is not always 
true if ever, that each one can see exactly each link in the chain 
of his life, each event or experience before it occurs : for such 
prescience is known only by the very advanced spirits. But 
this can be said, he chooses the course, by attractions, and 
impulsions which appeal to him, although the bitter and pain- 
ful part, the tragedy in the very core of his destiny is not un- 
folded or revealed to him,. The saying "where ignorance is 



42 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

bliss, it is folly to be wise," applies to the ignorant, passionate 
and inexperienced, who will not see, even though the facts are 
declared and the career, shown in dark, vivid tracings on the 
bright astral screen of life. Experience cannot be extempor- 
ized, and this is the sad part of destiny, that one will not or 
cannot see and understand what another sees or understands 
and plunges into an existence, in which the very condition of 
innocence and ignorance prevent him from prevising much of 
the future or acting upon any other ground than that of im- 
pulse, instinct or sensation. And should a prophet foretell 
such an one's future, even if the prophesy proved true, the in- 
dividual could only admit the mystery of the prophesy, with- 
out explaining how or why he knew, and the one who lived the 
life, could not and did not know; or the deeper mystery of the 
ordination in which his destiny was involved without his 
rseeming knowledge or consent. The life in the spiritual 
spheres, and even the willingness to learn now from those 
intelligences on both sides of life who know, will clear up the 
occult and the mysterious in these, our strange imperfect 
luman lives. 

All this is food for thought and is not spread upon these 
pages as so many meaningless words. No attempt is made to 
:Solve all human problems nor explain every act of the soul. A 
little reflection, meditation and inspiration will throw much 
light on the problems of each one's life and destiny, and if he 
does not conclude, after a careful examination of his life, that 
whatever is is right, then law, and his relation to it, have 
not, as yet, opened his eyes! 

"Whatever is, is best," is the optimism of the facts, the 
theological answer to the riddles of life, the sublime, hopeful, 
certain, inevitable reason for the plan which reveals itself at 
last in our destiny. As death is swallowed up in victory, so 
error and evil will pass away. This is not a dream! It is 
being done now, although society presents the usual antithesis. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 43 

It was never more corrupt and pure, the mind more chaotic 
and illuminated, the heart more selfish and generous, a para- 
doxical condition of the life of mankind, which marks the 
passing of the old and the dawn of the new aeon ! 

In the midst of the mire where the swine of man's nature 
wallows, is the germ of Divinity, which is unfolding, despite 
its environment, and as it unfolds it eats up the mire and de- 
stroys the swine and transmutes it all into a form like unto 
the lily in purity and beauty. For God, as the poet wrote, 
moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. Why 
evil is thus mixed with good, and, with matter forms the only 
shadow or adulteration of spirit, and as such is alchemy stically 
changed into its pure counterpart, the good, is as profound a 
mystery as any one might care to solve. And he who passes 
such matters lightly over is one who needs to have brought 
home with yet more powerful emphasis the saying, "the mills 
of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." 

Let no one flatter himself that he can go through life and 
escape the clutch of sorrow or pain, or the grip of some great 
trial or misfortune. The man who can do so has not yet been 
born. Yet, despite the very worst fate, the most deplorable 
destiny, let optimism prevail and let it inspire one. For if it 
be true, that whatever is to be will be, and whatever is, is 
right, it is as true that whatever is, is best. 

Death is not an evil nor a calamity, but a blessing. Poverty, 
disease, crime, insanity, great national and natural disasters 
and calamities, enter our lives and the lives of our loved ones, 
not in vain, nor for any other but for a good purpose, which is 
best in the end. If poverty is supposed to be a curse and 
wealth a blessing, let those who know the least of the divine 
significance of poverty and wealth in the envolvemem ot char- 
acter, to say nothing of the higher or lower psychic unfold- 
ments, attractions and qualifications of the spirit under them 
test them by exchanging places with the rich and poor, and 



44 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

so learn their own sophistries and dispel their prejudices about 
the dis-equalities of life and God's seeming injustice. If the 
poor and rich are degraded and debauched by poverty or wealth 
they are having their experiences, are living their life but are 
losing in the battle of life ; but if as many who are born poor or 
rich or achieve wealth by honest labor or lose it by misfortune, 
sdli remain God s noblenen and .voaien, si J place conscience 
above sense pleasures, purity abov^ lust or corruption in any 
form, still keep within the trailing clouds of glory of a spiritual 
vision, they are not only, as a matter of fact, happiest now, 
but at death ascend at once to the third zone, peopled with 
angelic intelligences. And who that looks on all sides of the 
problem would deny that such as are capable of so great a 
spiritual life, in the midst of such self denial and want on the 
one hand, and of such wealth and luxury on the other, and 
who sanctify their senses and mind by living as the Christ for 
the good of others, have missed much of real worth, so far as 
the world's measure of pleasure is concerned ? 

We neither condemn nor pass judgment upon any life. 
Each experience is necessary, if not sacredly personal, or it 
•could and would not be. It comes with a solemn lesson. 
Fortunate indeed, happy is the man who heeds and learns the 
lesson, for in the light of reflection on the spirit side of life, no 
experience is useless, no career in vain, no destiny not the best 

Brighter grows the soul when darkness yields to light. Justi- 
fication is not always had on earth. The swing of the pendu- 
lum does not complete the arc. The matter of one incarnation 
or expression is not sufficient to square the circle of life. The 
mirror is often broken before the perfect image is reflected, 
and yet, nothing is lost. 

Passion dies to give birth to love divine. Appetites decay 
and perish to yield to aspiration, love of truth and ideal living 
Desire, the dynamic cause of demonism and demonology, 
gives place to spiritual meditation and ecstacies. The physical 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 45 

man, so fruitful of error and evil, melts away, gradually to be 
sure, and sometimes only when a fierce fire is brought to bear 
upon him, but the eternal essence and the divine image in him 
survive to learn that the corruptible takes on incorruption and 
the mortal immortality. And destiny which determines our 
lot by our fate makes that lot the foundation of the only ex- 
periences which could inform and unfold us, which in them- 
selves prove the freedom of the human will and the sovereignty 
of God. If man loses his will to the sovereignty of God, it 
means that man submits to a will within himself, greater 
than his own will. And this means that the best in the man 
always wins, if it takes hell itself to squeeze the devil out of 
man, figuratively speaking, to have only God, the good, the 
divine in him, remain. 

"Great souls must burn in sorrow's furnace heat 'ere fully 
fitted life's great work to meet." 

Such is our teaching on fate and destiny in the light^of 
immortality. 



CHAPTER V. 

' $ Messages from the Spirit World. 

"For it left its light on the hill and seas 
That rim a thousand memories." 

— W. C. Gannett. 
Every great scientist who conscientiously investigates 
Spiritualism comes to the conclusion,that psychical phenomena 
the abnormal and supernormal facts of life are true, which 
means that messages are received from the spirits of the so- 
called dead who inhabit a place called the spirit world, and 
that it is indeed true as Harriet Beech er Stowe wrote, 
"It lies around us like a cloud, 
The world we do not see ; 
Yet the sweet closing of an eye, 
May bring us there to be. 
Its gentle breezes fan our cheek 
Amid our worldly cares; 
Its gentle voices whisper love 
And mingle with our prayers". 
The average person has been deterred from investigating 
psychic phenomena through fear, predudice, or selfishness, 
preferring ignorance on this most vital and important subject 
to positive convictions, born of a knowledge of the facts, and 
willing to go down to the grave, beastly as such action is, "with 
all his imperfections on his head", to use the language of 
Shakespeare, rather than be assured of a vision awaiting 
him in the tomb or a light awakening him from the sleep of 
death and blazing his pathway into another world. For 
such when they die there may be no vision, or light, since^they 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 47 

preferred to deny and ignor the existence and need of the spirit 
world. 

Dogmatic views of immortality and the insulated philosopher 
•of the life man now lives, are the slow accretions of centuries of 
the misconceptions of society and the false teachings of the 
-church. The result is a denial of Spiritualism which 
repeats the greatest miracle of all miracles of Christian- 
ity, the bodily resurrection of man as Jesus Christ demonstrat- 
ed his resurrection to Magdalene, also to his disciples and 
certain others of his followers. That the resurrection of a 
physical form,not the actual body which is interred or cremat- 
ed,but one like it, is possible, is indeed a matter of fact, is no 
longer disputed or disbelieved by men of science, or the en* 
lightened. And it is strange that any thoughtful, spiritually 
minded person could doubt the fact, since he as a spirit now 
animates, controls and uses a physical body. As a spirit he is 
now immaterial though his body is material, and yet there is 
no difference between his spirit in this body and his spirit in a 
finer, etherial body which he occupies after death. This is 
the point at issue. The phenomena and revelations of 
Spiritualism explain the Christian resurrection. 

It will be necessary to add that all external, objective cr 
physical phenomena occur abnormally through mediumship.* 

Mediumship is an organic, psychic function, possessed 
by a few, (less than one in 50,000) by which excarnate 
spirits can use the will, mind and body of a medium 
and afford tangible, palpable proof of their own power, 
identity and being. The word abnormal is used, because 
when we employ our own minds and bodies by the power 
of our own wills, that is psychologically normal, but when an 
intelligence or spirit, not our own, apparently outside of our 

*This is true, so far as our experiments, observations and knowledge 
of phenomenal Spiritualism extend. 



43 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

sphere of concrete existence, obsesses us, displacing our 
temporal possession of our faculties, senses and body, to ac t 
in our own stead and for the sake of demonstrating its survival 
after the change called death, by tests which can easily be 
recognized, because belonging to the plane and sphere of 
physical existence, that is psychologically abnormal. It is the 
deviation of the normal law or rule. It is not unnatural, in 
the sense, that it is the result of disease or insanity as the 
medical profession, the pathologist, and neurologist teach. 
They once erroneously treated mediums as insane and medi- 
umship as insanity. In some cities, medmms are still regarded 
as insane and their phenomena a violation of the statutes. It 
has only been very recently that a man is not judged by the 
courts as non compus mentis because he is a Spiritualist. 

These abnormal phenomena prove that the normal occur 
because we are spirits, and as spirits clothed with matter, we 
use matter and function on the objective, material plane,- as 
the abnormal phenomena prove that excama^e^§p$r¥<C with 
the permission of the me dium^ nd H5}^rrtue of mediumsj^yif^ 
through a form p ^^ jgj^'Sid trance can, do '£&& same thing. 

This is the^whole sto rv f ^ O f ^ p JlfrrTalisrn — the rest of its 
science, p^osog^j^^^^^g 1 ' ^ follow as a matter of course. 

/The supernormal is not the normal or abnormal, but it is 
triat p©wer, or those powers of the soul raised to a super- 
normal vibration. Their noumena or actions prove the free, 
supersentient nature of the soul, — its ability now to transcend 
the limitations and power of the senses and prove its Divinity. 
And this supernormal evidence of the Divinity of man,positive 
as it is, strengthens the negative, abnormal proofs. 

What more need of proof of the immortality of the soul ? 
If it can be shown as psychical research has shown, and as 
Spiritualism itself has taught from the beginning that we are 
now eternal, so far as the age of the spirit is concerned, mortal 
■ — because born into existence, with mortal, objective minds 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 49> 

and bodies, but immortal after death, with immortal, sub- 
jective minds and bodies, then, when it is said, "I see, hear or 
feel supernormally", it means that I can see hear, or feel- 
psychically and spiritually, and so function on the inner, sub- 
jective or supernormal plane or sphere of nature ; and by 
raising the quality of my vibrations I commune consciously 
with the denizens of the spirit world. This is not an easy 
matter to do, but it can be done, messages sent to this world* 
through mediumship, whether by inspiration (telepathically) 
or by materialization, in one form or another, are as truly of 
spirits, if genuine, as messages transmitted supernormally. 

The supernormal messages are superior and to be preferred 
to the abnormal when the finest and best conditions can be 
had, if for no stronger reason than that they are direct and 
pure, and are less mixed with psychic and bodily conditions- 
and elements in their transmissions. The super- 

normal evidence comes closer to spirit and the spiritual- 
The abnormal evidences are gross, composite and material- 
Still let us thank God for the abnormal in the absence of the 
supernormal; and for the supernormal in the absence of the 
abnormal. But the more excellent way is always preferred 
because safer, surer, more convincing, because spiritual r 
rather than spiritistic. 

With this explanation of what the abnormal and super- 
normal in the new psychology and in Spiritualism mean, we- 
can proceed with the messages from the spirit world. 

These messages are transcripts from human souls who once- 
lived on earth, among people who were their relatives, neigh- 
bors and friends and who still possess the common 
element of human love and interest, as though they were stilfc 
on earth. That all these messages, in fact, only a very few of 
them, are extraordinary and superlatively literary, scientific* 
and philosophical documents prove their general, common 
human origin, as Sir Oliver Lodge and equally astute 



50 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

scientists admit. The purposes of immortality, and inter- 
communication of souls between the two worlds, is not the 

-exhibition of learning but the manifestation of humbleness 
before God, not the revelations of mysteries too big for the 
mind of earth's children to grasp, but that life and love are 

^eternal. This can best, be advanced, not by the immortal 
soul pretending to know more than a mortal, (when he does 
not) , not by advancing any knowledge, unless the identity and 
immortality are proven by it or unless it has a message to give 
by divine appointment, but rather by the ordinary tests which 
usually prove personal identity. That these tests are both 
satisfactory and sufficient is evidenced by the numbers who 
have been made Spiritualists by them. Just such tests as 
prove the survival of the identity after death are needed 

.and given — not such as are desired. The reason 

for this is obvious. These tests are often some facts 
in the earthly life of the spirit, of which neither the 

medium nor the investigator knew anything, but which prove 
on investigation not only to be true, but exactly the kind of 
proof best suited to eliminate from the mind all idea of col- 

jlusion and fraud and to force conviction. The illiterate and 
idiotic character of much material received from the spirit 
side of life, is due largely to ignorance, the mental and spiritu- 
al attitude of both medium and investigators toward the 

-spirits. A medium may hope for the inspirations and mes- 
sages of angels but unless he unfolds a life consistent with such 
hopes his mediumship alone may prove valueless, or a curse. 
He may aspire to receive wisdom from the wisest teachers in 
the celestial spheres, but unless his aspirations are sincere, 

^earnest and pure, and his mind like that of a child, passive 
and receptive, his mediumship alone cannot bring the result. 
Ignorant mediums do often startle the world with their tran- 
scendant knowledge and revelations, but such are found to be 

^worthy, pure instruments, and not debased tools of obsessing. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 5* 

earth bound spirits. Among such ignorance is a word which- 
might consistently become a synonym of innocence, guiless- 
ness, modesty, trust and child-like simplicity and royalty of 
mind. And these qualities are heavenly, and a blessing 
among those who cannot boast of a worldly knowledge or col* 
lege education. And who can say which is to be preferred r 
after all is said, done, or known, nesciece or knowledge, as the 
words are properly conceived? When men awaken to the 
fact that their silly, foolish, insane, false, and hypocritical 
lives force upon and through sensitives, called mediums and 
psychics, certain sinister conditions and malicious influences 
which act as deterrents and, which always force back upon 
the T\orld, by the law of reflection, exactly what they offer to- 
the spirit, it will then have the key to much of the silly stuff 
which purports to emanate from the spirit world, but which 
is the froth and suds of their own unclean and miserable lives. 
This may seem a very hard and severe conclusion to arrive at,. 
but it is true. And, if this were all of the truth, it would be 
deplorable enough, but there are earth bound spirits who can 
cross swords with their neighbors on earth, and win against all- 
odds when it comes to the exploitation of the seven deadly 
sins. Each by the power of the law of attraction, prove that 
the river not only cannot rise but never rises higher than its' 
source. Let no one dare to investigate Spiritualism who will 
not do so, with a simple, pure mind and heart. If he does, the 
democracy of Spiritualism will show him where he belongs. 

Often it happens that the controls of a medium, through the 
selfish depraved mind and heart of the medium, force upon 
innocent persons, material messages, which are not only un- 
true, obscene and fraudulent, because their own pure forces- 
have no power temporarily at least, to attract their own who 
are in higher sphere. In such a case one or two seances wilt 
prove that while the phenomena may be genuine, the names 
and messages are frauds, and the one thing to do in such am 



52 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

♦event, is to withdraw from such influences by ending all sit- 
tings with such tools of the spirit world. Such mediums are 
not to be trusted. The servant is here found to be not above 
tthe master, but is on the same plane and is in the same sphere 
and such being the case the mortal or spiritual character of the 
medium creates both the obscene or the false message. A 
word of advice to such investigators. These mediums are 
necromancers who, if they were not mediums might be worse, 
that is, sorcerers or black magicians. Paul said, "Try the 
.-spirits". True, but first try the mediums, and if by their 
iruit, or words, evil results, shun them. Hold fast to the good. 

The best and most reliable messages are those which treat 
of the spirit world, the spiritual life, of development, of guid- 
ance and inter-communication and which bring love and com- 
fort to those who mourn. Other messages which treat of 
secular or material things are less likely to be trust- worthy. 
Not that direct knowledge on the destiny or business of this 
life cannot be accurately given by the spirits, but as they are 
not so closely in touch with secular and material matters as 
they are with the spiritual, they prefer the higher to the lower 
forms of knowledge. And if they are more in touch with them 
"than with the spiritual, their knowledge may not be any more 
extended or prescient than when on earth, for death does not 
afford any spirit clairvoyant realization or illumination. Il- 
lumination or realization is the result of psychic and spiritual 
•development. 

Nor are spirits always able or willing when able, to foretell 
the future. The power of control and of manifestation is not 
.always perfectly known or applied. Still prophesy is possible 
and guidance on business is not impossible, however unwise it 
may be. Some declare that it interferes with the normal order 
of things. This is not true, spirits who prophesy or advise 

on destiny are not necessarily meddling with human affairs 
-when such advice is given in good faith. It is as necessary to 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 53 

be led by higher powers, though man may not always be con- 
sious of the leading, as it is for a client to receive legal advice 
from a lawyer, a patient to receive medical advice from a 
physician or a child wise direction from a parent. It is all 
involved in the human scheme and order of life. So long as 
we follow our best guidance and such advice does not go con- 
trary to the dictations of conscience or reason, it is sound and 
helpful. 

Messages from the spirit world should be grouped into two 
classes, direct (supernormal), and indirect (abnormal). The 
indirect messages are the more popular and convincing, because 
Spiritualists and investigators think that their own minds 
and those of the mediums have the least to do with them. 
This, however, is not true. They seem extraneous, but in 
reality are sent through (from within the mind), the organic 
forces and the organisms of both, the psychics and sitters. 
However, they are none the less reliable and satisfactory. 
We shall give a few of them for the comfort and enlightm?nt 
of the bereaved who still long for the touch of a vanished hand 
and the sound of a voice that is still. And the first ones which 
we shall give are those sent to J. C. F. Grumbine, while still a 
Unitarian clergyman, at Geneseo. Illinois. These messages 
are genuine and were written, the first two on tablet paper, 
with lead pencil and in total darkness, under absolutely test 
conditions. The psychic was Elizabeth Bangs of Chicago. 

First message (by psychography) ever received by Mr, 
Grumbine : 
"Dear Brother: — 

I am glad for this meeting; for I live and am with you 
each day. You are inspired in your work, and the more you 
invoke the spirit friends, the greater evidence you will have 
and the nearer they will come into your life. 

Mother is with me, she cannot write, but sends you her bless- 
ings. Sister Laura. 



54 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

Laura I never knew on earth. She passed away when a 
child in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mother had a liberal education and 
could write, but she did not write that evening, no doubt, 
giving Laura her force. There were about ten at this seance. 
Other phenomena which all witnessed were spirits playing on a 
guitar, voices, luminous faces and hands, raps, touches, 
writings. This seance was held Jan. 18, 1893, in the home of 
Mrs. A. McFarlane, now deceased, of Geneseo, Illinois. 

Later Laura wrote at another seance: 
"Dear Brother Jessy. — 

These few lines written to you this evening through the 
agency of the Spirit guides will prove to you that we are always 
near you and interested in your spiritual progress as well as 
your happiness while in the earth form. Many visions of the 
heavenly glory you may expect to see near at hand. Mother 
and I join in love to you to-night. 

Your sister ever the same, 

Laura. 

Jessy is a misspelling of my name that I used when a child, 
later on correcting it to Jesse. 

At the first seance a Rev. friend, who did not disclose his 
name or identity wrote :- 

"In days gone by when we pressed a question too closely, 
we were taught that there is a mystery in godliness which no 
human mind should strive to fathom. So our eyes were 
blinded and reason was set at naught. But the great law of 
evolution has carried us onward and upward, until we find 
within us the Divine Principle of God, and a close correspond- 
ence of our soul with the great Oversoul. We find also that 
little things confound the mighty, and that this little pencil, 
moved by spirit power will prove to you the everlasting pro- 
gress of the soul, which all may attain, and a knowledge of 
which all may obtain by communication." 

"A Rev. Friend". j 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 55 

Second Message From "A Rev. Friend," written in the dark 
on a typewriter, under test conditions, the spirit operator 
working the keys faster in point of speed and accuracy than 
the most expert. This phase of mediumship was fully in- 
vestigated by W. T. Stead, Editor of "The Review of Reviews" 
(in 1904). 
4t My Dear Friend and Rev. Brother', — 

This evening I am granted the privilege of soul communion 
with you through the expression of this, your earth instru- 
ment. And in spirit life, I, too, must employ a like instru- - 
ment, which, you in earth life, have not the clearness of vision 
or comprehension to understand. Yet through the two 
avenues we meet, as it were, face to face, and exchange 
thought for thought. 

In earth life my eyes were blinded to the truth. I would 
not see the light, and now I teel more fully the necessity and 
desire to impart light and comfort to mortals who are trod- 
ding the same pathway. As I view the ignorance and super- 
stition of mortals, I wonder ; and feel an overwhelming spirit 
of enthusiasm to awaken them to the realization of that which 
through experience I know to be true. 

The language I must employ to give expression to you of my 
soul thought and experience, is inadequate far to that which 
is real, — or that which you are able to comprehend, but like 
unto your language to the infant, I will give you that which I 
in part realized. 

As the ebb tide of life grew less, so the spirit quickened, un- 
til I felt a perfect newness of life, so surging with exquisite 
joy, that every attribute of spirit came to me, that which 
mortals call a part of God. So calm and so beautiful in their 
perfection were all things which met my gaze, and so loving, 
tender and gentle, were the friends who approached me, that 
I recognized at once, that surely this was a part of heaven, — 
more truly beautiful than had ever come to my thought. And 



56 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

so as I awakened to all the light around me and was given the 
first lessons of my new condition, I then realized the truth of 
the after life — and knew that I had done wrong in condemning 
without knowledge. Now I find pleasure in learning the 
spiritual lesson of the great spiritual universe, yet find equal 
pleasure in returning and imparting knowledge and light of 
mortals of earth — all of whom must meet with the change 
through the same atmosphere and condition. All must be 
their own judge and so qualify themselves by the condition 
and circumstances of their earthly life. 

My friend, I have found great pleasure in giving you these 
few lines in expression of my soul thought this evening, and I 
shall be pleased to come to you again even more demonstrably 
as you seek the avenues which permit me to give you ex- 
pression. I am your Rev. friend and brother, 

J. H. Harter. 

Rev. J. H. Harter was once a Universalist Clergyman. I 
also belonged to that denomination, having graduated from 
the Theological School of the St. Lawrence University, Canton, 
N. Y., and was first settled at Syracuse, N. Y. I was called 
upon to officiate at the funeral of Brother Harter, many years 
before this message was received. At the time of his transition 
he had no denominational affiliations, was interested in Spiritu- 
alism, and called himself the pastor of "The Church of the 
Divine Fragments". 
Message from Mother :- 

"My dear Boy — Many years have passed since I last spoke 
to you in a voice which you could hear, but let me assure you 
that the intervening time has not been spent far apart from 
your life. For as life is eternal, so also is a mother's love 
everlasting. I have taken cognizance of all the changes of 
your life, and often in your more thoughtful moments I have 
tried to reach you, and help you to ponder the question you 
are now clamoring to answer. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 57 

Now, my dear boy, the darkened clouds of your existence 
begin to pass away. The true light of the after life dawns 
upon you. You begin to feel the mastering of thought and 
knowledge. And this same thought you may attribute to 
divine inspiration, for so it is. You have been led to this 
thought and to the investigation of this subject by the higher 
intelligences of the eternal spheres ; and so will you be led, day 
by day, and hour by hour, until your own spirit will so broaden 
as to enable you to impart the knowledge to the many hunger- 
ing, suffering souls of earth. In this, my boy, you will find 
an earth mission appointed you from highest principles. 

Loving Mother. 
Messages from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to J. C. F. 
Grumbine, his guardian spirit. Written on slate under test 
•conditions by spirit psychography. 
* l My Beloved Friend and Charge \- 

Again it is my happy privilege to add another beautiful 
stone to the mansion of light which is being reared within your 
spiritual atmosphere; for I would have you know that each 
step towards that complete unfoldment for which your spirit 
hungers, is also a constructive influence increasing your spirit- 
ual environment. When your spirit's perception is quickened 
to a conscious knowledge of what is passing in your presence 
you will perceive that there is reared a beautiful home, with 
adornments in accord with your highest aspirations. You 
are now beautifying it day by day by the efforts you are 
making to reach that highest aim and end of human life, 
"soul unfoldment." Be not daunted in seeking this state or 
goal of human effort, even though mountainous obstacles rise 
in your pathway. For you know that one of old has said 
quite truly, by thy faith, so shall it be with thee. It shall be 
my pleasing office to steady thy wavering footsteps, O friend 
of earth, when trials beset you, and the way becomes hard and 
troublesome. Therefore, keep thine eyes ever toward the 



58 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

light, and learn to lean by faith on me, for I shall be your stafT 
and guide, to direct you onward in the toilsome path of truth 
to complete soul unfoldment. I will make the way light, and 
lift the weariness from thy heart, if thou doest but heed me 
well and keep thy faith bright and strong. For I am the 
friend chosen to be thy spirit's guide unto the end and I am 
ambitious to serve thee well. Then be ever earnest, true and 
brave in this, the battle of life. Fear not the truth, 'twill be 
an ax to cleave a path before thee, if you do but grasp it firmly 
and strike error to the earth. Remember always that one 
stands beside thee on whom thou mayest ever lean. . 
Thy Friend and Guardian Spirit — 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

It will be well to add for the benefit of the reader that 
"E. B. B.," is the spiritual founder of "The Order of the White 
Rose", whose literature and "The System of Philosophy con- 
cerning Divinity" constitute the inspired teachings of the 
Order, which the student applies for the unfoldment and 
realization of all psychical and supernormal powers and his 
Divinity, without the aid of the trance or obsessions. By a 
series of evidences Mr. Grumbine has proven to his own satis- 
faction that this, and other communications received from 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning are genuine and from her. * These 
proofs, Mr. Grumbine is ready and willing to show and dis- 
cuss with any fair minded investigator. At a private seance 
in 1893 she wrote in red pencil :- 

"Spirit voices in the air, 

Spirit forms above thy head, 

Gifts unfolding bright and fair 

Whereso'er thy feet may tread." 
And again she wrote through a noted psychic, Mrs. Mary 

*See special book on "Evidences of Spirit Identities," by Mr. Grumbine- 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 59 

Longley, who did not know that "E. B. B.," was my guardian 
and guiding spirit this exquisite poem, 

"Dear one of earth, to thee I gladly sing, 

Of home, and heaven, and all things pure and sweet ; 

From shining hills of glory oft I bring 

A crown of roses rare to lay before thy feet. 

Though thorns of sorrow pierce thy tender heart, 

When thou dost seek for light upon thy way, 

Still shalt thou, dear, in patience bear thy part, 

While climbing heavenward toward the brighter day. 

II 
Roses and lilies, tender bud and bloom, 
Thy guardian angels bear to give thee peace. 
And stars of glory shineth through all gloom, 
To guide thee on where troublings ever cease. 
The roses of celestial beauty have no thorn, 

The heavenly glory hath no darkening night 

Thy mounting spirit, through with anguish torn 
Shall scale in triumph truth's divinest height. 

Ill 
^Remember, Dear, the master bore his cross 
And wore the crown of thorns with patience mild. 
His saintly spirit counted life no loss, 
But in its anguish still with gladness smiled ; 
And thus, through sorrow, pain and human woe, 
Through persecution's path, he gained the goal 
Of victory and peace o'er all below, 
And won life's triumph of a matchless soul." 

At another seance a beautiful white rose was materialized, 
wet with dew, and fell suddenly on the music box, startling the 
medium. This message written by "E. B. B.," on a slate was 
being received at the time : 



60 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

"Dear One: — 

Accept of the rose I have brought you today. It is em- 
blematic of my love for you as well as your spiritual develop- 
ment. Its more perfect blossoming you will understand from 
time to time in the way of your development. 

Lovingly, 

E. B. B. 
Another message from Mrs. Browning: 

My dear One: — 

Just a few lines of consolation I will give you and then with 
you proceed on the journey of life. Do not forget, for a 
moment that I am ever with you in all things, and that, if 
that which you desire is withheld, it is for a wise purpose. I 
assure you in all truth, that these things and more I will bring 
you in their time, consistent with your own spiritual advance- 
ment. Daily and hourly, I will bring you a perfect haven of 
peace, until all around is a complete oneness .with the great 
over-soul. 

Lovingly always, 

E. B. B. 

Hundreds of other and elevating messages were received 
from her spirit but space forbids their publication here. The 
human and divine element is strong in these messages and for 
this reason they are given to the reader as a revelation of 
human and divine love. As life is eternal, so is love. And as 
we all need love, so God has made it possible for immortal 
souls who no longer visibly walk with us to bestow upon 
us while we are still on earth, the light and benediction 
of a heavenly love. It is the best they have, the best they 
can give. Such love our spirit friends bring us. 

This final message from "E. B. B." will show that she is still 
on the side of truth, though a resident of Casa Guida in the 
spirit world. Written on a slate by psychography. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 61 

4 * Dear One: — 

Truth is a light in itself — it is the light of the world, since 
error leads only to confusion and darkness. The light of 
truth cannot be forever suppressed. It has an inherent power 
within itself which will in time overcome all obstacles and 
shine forth in its native purity. This is why the truth is the 
only solid foundation. Science seeks only the truth — hence 
its great authority. When religion and politics seek only the 
truth they will become the light of the world. What a change. " 

July 4th, 1908, at 10:30 P. M., Mr. Grumbine lost his wife r 
after twenty two years of happy companionship. She passed 
away suddenly and unexpectedly although not well for over 
eight years. She seemed only a girl. Her large blue eyes- 
opened a moment before her spirit fled, (although she had 
been unconscious for over an hour) , illumined with the glory 
of the new life and world on which she was entering, and then 
they closed forever on this earth. During her last years on 
earth the knowledge of immortality increased her patience,, 
courage and unselfishness. Hardly had she left us when 
she immediately sought to afford assurance of her immortality 
and her presence. She appeared often to me and indicated 
how free from pain and weakness she now is. Late in July at 
the Hotel Cumberland, New York City, she dictated this com- 
forting message. Dictated through and received by me. 
"Dear Girls: — 

I am sorry not to have been able to be with you and papa in 
New York City and at Bridgeport on the Sound. But it was 
not to be. And now as I look back over the short time I have 
been called from you my only regret is that I had to leave so 
suddenly. I felt that I could not stay even though I wished 
to do so for your sakes. 

And though I feel at times a deep sorrow when I see how 
you all miss me, I draw very near to you in love and spirit, and 
I try to make you feel my nearness and presence. O what a 



S2 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

beautiful, sunshiny world this is that I now live in. And to 
think that I am well, free of pain and am happy. I shall 
bring you only love, devotion and peace. George is here (her 
brother passed away in January the same year, aged 28, at our 
home) by my side and sends the girls his love and kisses, and 
gives each one a boquet of violets (the only flowers he cared 
for) for rememberance. I shall always be with you. Each 
day I will send you my love and thought." 

Again, but later, after a residence of some five months in the 
spirit world, she wrote, — 

"I am with you so closely that at times, it seems, that I am 
still with you in a body. But I do not wish to be in a physical 
body now, nor to recall the anguish of heart you felt and still 
feel, — or my own sufferings. I feel that you will go on in the 
way that will be best and wisest,, and, as I should have done 
"bad I lived. * * * I want you to feel that I am with you in 
.all things, and if at times you are sad, it is because I too feel 
lonely, but we shall soon realize perfect communion and com- 
panionship of spirit when tl e;e sad feelings will not be so 
strong, but_when love will bring us grateful relief from all these 
sorrows." 

Again, but still later, she wrote; . 

"Rest assured that I am not unhappy because I am not 
with you in a body, for knowing as I do since entering the 
spirit world, how so many do not care and so many do not 
know that we live and can enter into the life and work c f those 
near and dear to us on earth, I am grateful for the sense of 
realization you and all of us feel in the presence of death, and 
how while we are missed and separated from each other, we still 
understand that we are very close and love each other still." 

Again she Writes:; 

"We are all. in one world just as on earth although the spheres 
like cities, towns, and villages in the earth, unite or separate 
^spirits by wide differences of occupations, life and love. This 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 63- 

is the radical difference conveyed by the word plane, while the 
word sphere refers mostly to the life and character of the 
spirit." 

Her further description of the spirit world will help us to> 
realize what it is by what Gerald Massey calls the law of dis- 
similitude. Spirits do not have wings and they do not walk,, 
unless they choose. They glide through space. "I can 
glide over you," she wrote, "and be near you, without feeling 
tired at all." "Unfoldment here" she adds, "is as it is there,, 
only of a finer, superior order. I live, as it were, in an at- 
mosphere of ideality, and in a home of such fairy structure and 
etherial composition, compared with the houses on earth, . 
that one can only think of the gossamer of a spider's web to 
describe the essence or substance of it. Still it is as real and 
solid to us as your earth houses are to you. So far as I am. 
able to explain my new condition, and the spheres and planes 
of life, they must be likened to a globe, on which there are an 
infinite number, all more radiantly clear and luminous than 
the other, and our own mind, thoughts and deeds form the 
means of attaining or using them in regular, progressive order. 
Efforts to describe the homes, temples, gardens, in fact what- 
ever go to make up the substances and employments of spirits 
and their bodies will fail, in a sense, because there are no words 
by which superior qualities of substances can be explained by 
inferior qualities. And in order to know what a spirit means- 
one must spiritualize the word, form, or symbol, used to con- 
vey the idea." Then to cap the climax of all wisdom she con- 
cludes:- "but love is divine and eternal, -and my love for you* 
and the girls and my interest in the home each day and each 
moment of each day, is stronger than ever." 

These are but a few of the countless messages which have- 
been received, and can be received, by earth's children from 
their loved ones on the spirit side of life. No one bereaved is 
left disconsolate, if it opens its heart sjTnpathetically to the- 



-64 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

one whom Divinity hath chosen to call higher and at the same 
time to afford it the balm and heart's ease which immortal life 
,and love alone can supply. We cannot call our departed loved 
ones back to earth as they were, but we can know that they 
live and love us still. Are we prepared to perceive and re- 
ceive this greatest of all truth ? 

''We shall go down the vale, love, hand in hand, 

Sigh and grow old. 
But there will still be spring time in the land, 

The meadow gold 
Of dandelions, and the sound of bees 

In blossoming trees ; 
And fairies still their moonlight revels hold 
Though we be old. 

We shall walk by and linger, Love, a while 

To see the Spring, 
And we shall draw together as we smile 

At every thing — 
.At flowers, and little children at their play 

Greeting the May, 
Our hearts aglow with their young Spring at last, 

Though ours be past. 

And when these pleasant paths know us no more, ! 

When we shall sound 
The farthest seas that leave an unknown shore 

In mists profound, 
We shall not turn regretfully to look 

At earth's closed book, 
For we shall ever be, without one fear, 

Together, dear." 



CHAPTER VI. 

Conditions and Means of Spirit Communications. 

""For the babe's sake, he thrust a coin of gold » 

Jnto her hand; but it fell through, and rolled, 
.Ringing along the stones; he followed, found 
It, brought it back, and looked around — • 
There was no woman waiting with her hand 
Outstretched, no child where he had seen them stand. 
The beggar was a spirit, doomed to plead 
With hurrying way farers, who took no heed. 
But passed her by, indifferent as the dead, 
Till one should hear her voice and turn the head ; 
Doomed to stand there and beg for bread, in tears, 
To feed her child that had been dead for years. 
This was the very spot where she had spent 
Its life for drink, and this the punishment. 
She felt she had let slip into the grave 
And now would give eternity to save; 
Heartless and deaf and blind, the world went by, \ 

Until this dreamer came, with seeing eye ; 
The good Samaritan of souls had given, 
And wrought the change that was to her as heaven " 

Gerald Massey. 
There are no easy rules or conditions for psychical develop* 
-ment or living the spiritual life. To gain intromission to the 
kingdom of the spirit demands material or sense sacrifices. 
And he who is not ready, or is unwilling to make such sacri- 
fices to prove either his own immortality or that of his dea rest 
friend certainly will have no one to blame if in deed he lives 
and dies in ignorance of the greatest fact that can be known on 
this or the other side of the grave. 



66 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

It is also a useless and futile labor to rebut the proposition 
of the sensualist and materialist, who, in the guise of an ethical 
culturist, a humanitarian or a utilitarian, cry out, ''one world 
at a time," and who asks the absurd question, "cui boni" r 
what is the benefit or good of such knowledge ? The strongest 
reply which has ever been given to such apologies for coward- 
ice and ignorance is this, that unless the youth, or in fact, their 
parents can be taught and scientifically shown that the soul is 
immortal, that death does not end all, that there is a justifi- 
able and more than ethical or -utilitarian reason for living a 
pure, beautiful and .spiritual life, neither the church will be 
able any longer to scare man into a religious life by threats of 
"hell fire and brimstone" or damnation in the future, nor will 
society be able to deter him from living any life that pleases 
him, however criminal or corrupt. Because he will ask, 
(what to the materialist is the unanswerable question), "what 
is your authority for demanding of me to do so. and so" ? And 
the old trite, stereotyped theological and ethical replies will 
not alter his attitude to the world and the spirit. 

Nor will it avail to revive a faith in a dead religion, where 
they who profess it, cease to live by it. A dead religion like 
a corpse is dead because religion like the soul has found a 
superior vehicle for its expression. The best in any ethnic 
religion is its pure Spiritualism. 

Spiritualism as a religion conceives of man's relation to man 
as dependent upon man's relation to God; in short it is the 
chosen name for the means whereby man and God can unite in 
spirit, and whereby man may have revealed the law of spiritu- 
al unfoMment, and how life begins and ends in Divinity.. 
So that it can be said that had man lived the spiritual instead 
of the merely intellectual, emotional, moral or aesethetic life,, 
he would have had a conscious knowledge of the truth of 
Spiritualism, that is, of the immortality of the soul, of the 
value of the spiritual life, of the need and blessings of inspiring,. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 67 

guardian, ministering, and familiar spirits, of the Divinity of 
life now and here, of the law of justice, often called karma, or 
•compensation, as shown in acts which measure equal causes 
with effects, and of his power to. function on the supernormal 
plane, and so receive the fullest enjoyment of a peaceful life, 
radiant with the glory of the light of Heaven. The spiritual 
life is the life of spirit, pure and simple. It is not intellectu- 
ality nor materiality, but spirituality, and it is this quality 
which when introduced into the life, enables man to realize 
his Divinity and to commune and communicate consciously 
with spirit. It is the same pure doctrine taught in all great 
ethnic religions, in Brahmanism, Buddhism, Zorastrianism, 
Christianity, Mohammedanism — when these religions are 
stripped of race characteristics, temperamental conditions, in- 
tellectual and spiritual limitations. Theology can never ex- 
plain the spiritual life as anything more or less than the life of 
the spirit. And that life is the same in man or in God, that is 
why it is called the divine life. 

The first and important condition therefore for piercing the 
veil between the material and spiritual world, and obtaining 
the blessed privilege and opportunity of spirit communi- 
cation and communion is the spiritual life. It is the result of 
four spiritual elements (or forces) , aspiration or prayer, medi- 
tation or thoughtfulness, character or purity, divine love or 
unselfish service to others. 

Self seeking, or selfishness have no place in the life of the 
spirit. And when in spirit communion or communication, 
personal love or selfishness obtains, obsession of some sort 
inevitably follows. Such a state of mind and heart, with the 
life darkened by material and sensuous shadows, hinder the 
spirit from attaining the end it seeks and keeps closed the 

door between the outer, material and inner, spiritual world. 

One may scoff at this idea, but the failures of the self seekers 
to obtain satisfactory psychical results on which they can 



68 THE SPIRIT WORLD 

build a conviction of the truth are almost too numerous to any 
longer deny. Most any one can prove what is here declared. 
All this applies to spiritual intercourse and to self unfold- 
ment and realization of Divinity, as the conscious expression 
of one's psychic power, as spiritual seeing, or perceiving, 
(clairvoyance) prevision, divination, prophesy, inspiration,, 
seership, spiritual hearing, (clairaudience) , spiritual feeling 
(clairsentience), telepathy, pychometry, spiritual illumination, 
inspiration, consciousness. 

In practice one needs but let the four elements just mention- 
ed govern the life and extraordinary and supernormal ex- 
periences will follow.* The results will be quickened by child- 
like trust and faith, the becoming as a little child to be led by 
the Divine Farent and older, wiser spirits on the spirit side of 
life as a child is led by parents on this side. 

Faith and trust are not credulity. No one can hope to ad- 
vance in spiritual unfoldment and knowledge without faith 
and trust, faith in spiritual facts, laws and- beings, even when 
one cannot prove them by any available tests, although others 
have done so; and trust which is* an implicit reliance on the 
truth when the steps to it and its partial, or full realization 
have not been made clear! And as aspiration, though tfulness r 
purity and service qualify the will, mind, heart, life, cleansing 
each faculty and sense, and absolving the body of its natural 
passion — the thirst for blood and hunger for meat — will it be 
remarkable that every supernormal gift or power of the spirit 
is set into action and the new life made to synchronize and 
harmonize with divine states and conditions, in which intro- 
mission will be had with familiar spirits, even celestial intel- 
ligences ? And who will misprize or undervalue such experi- 

*For full information, consult "The System of Philosophy Concerning: 
Divinity," the teachings of "The College of Divine Sciences and Realiza- 
tion /' See notice among advertisements. 



THE SPIRIT WORLD 69 

ences, in a world where loneliness, despair, pain, heartache, 
weariness and suffering are the common lot or heritage ? 

If one wishes to experiment with mediumship,the outer door 
to the spirit world, and a door wide open to evil and good 
spirits, to enter and return by the law of attraction, the same 
four spiritual forces can be applied beneficially. To be a 
medium only is an advantage to the human race, scientifically, 
philosophically and spiritually, for the reason that a medium 
proves by the character and quality of the phenomena exactly 
what the soul is and what the soul can hope for in the spirit 
world by the law of cause and effect, correspondence and at- 
traction. But of infinitely more value is the God-like man 
above the mere medium, who acting upon the teaching or the 
revelations of the spirit, makes of himself the medium of God's 
life and love, the adept and master who rises to the sphere 
where spdrits need no' longer control him to prove his and 
their (discarnate) being, or immortality, but where each one 
can commune and communicate, spirit with spirit and spirits 
with God. For this is the beginning and end of universal 
Spiritualism. 



PROSPECTUS 

OF THE; - 

College of Divine Sciences 
and Realization 

And "The Order of the White Rose"— A College with 
a Destiny — An Order which is Rosicrucian 

J. C. F. GRUMBINE, President 

Fellow of the Society of Science, Letters and Arts of London, 
England. Founded in 1894. 



" The System of Philosophy Concerning 
Divinity." 

The five series comprehending the system applies to hu- 
man needs, because man is essentially divine. The series 
mark a new era in Divine Science, Mysticism and Occultism, 
and should be hailed by all students of the Spirit as the Voice 
crying in the wilderness. If spiritual unfoldment or reali- 
zation is not possible under the direction of this system, then 
there is little hope for the human race. There is no magic in 
the System. It begins and ends as a science in spirit. Prep- 
aration to perceive and receive the truth is from within. So 
by a psychological process and psychological formulae, an 
unfoldment is accomplished. 

Each one who seeks realization can have it, because each 
one is a sensitive, each one can attain Divinity. 

MYSTICISM AND ROSICRUCIANISM. 

The Hermetic law, Biblical Mysteries and Rosicrucianism 
are fully explained in the System. 



OCCULTISM AND PSYCHISM. 

"Your hidden psychical powers are made operative by this 
System, if rules are applied. 

THEOSOPHY. 
We are not opposed to any other cult of Occultism, but why 
go to India, Egypt or any nation of the Orient for illumination 
or God wisdom ? No one set of men or college are the chosen 
seers or exponents of the truth, although all are doing an im- 
portant work. This System fully comprehends all esoteric 
teachings. 

OUR METHOD. 

It is interior, luminous, a priori and Hermetic. Students 
are taught by a unique, original, psychological process 
how to express all psychical powers. 

BIBLE MYSTERIES. 

A normal course follows the System. This course 

furnishes the key to the hidden wisdom of the Bible, also of all 
symbols, myths, allegories, numbers, the Cabala and occult 
psychology. 

"THE SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY CONCERNING 
DIVINITY." 

The Series — Mail Course — Fifty-six Lessons. 

First— THE DIVINITY OF SENSITIVENESS. Twelve 
lessons. Ten special test experiments. Advanced Teach- 
ings. 

Second— THE DIVINITY OF CLAIRVOYANCE OR 
PERCEPTION. Twelve lessons. Ten experiments. Ad- 
vanced Teachings. In book form. 

Third— THE DIVINITY OF INSPIRATION Twelve 
lessons. Ten experiments. Advanced Teachings. 

Fourth— THE DIVINITY OF HEALING. Ten lessons. 
Ten experiments Advanced Teachings. 

Fifth— THE DIVINITY OF ILLUMINATION. Ten 
lessons. 

N. B. — The student who passes final examination suc- 
cessfully is given a diploma. He also can become a member 
of The Order of The White Rose. 

Realization is in the regular order of the Teachings, and 
there is and can be no variation from the rule. No separate 
series can be taken. 



TUITION. 

The entire series can now be had for $60.00, payable at once 
or in $5.00, twelve monthly installments. 

A normal course for those who wish to become Teachers is 
obligatory. The fee is $10.00. 

THE ORDER OF THE WHITE ROSE. 

This mystic Order is Rosicrucian, the seed of the oldest 
Order in existence, and is the exponent of Universal Religion. 
Only such as have mastered the five series and have passed 
satisfactory examinations are eligible. Already the Order 
numbers many both in America and the Old World, and we 
en con rage all who enter the College as initiates, however 
feeble or dormant in expression their psychic and divine 
powers may be, to aspire for adept ship, to become a Rosi- 
crucian. 

A Church of Universal Religion is established and open to 
the public in Boston. 

ENDOWMENT FUND. 

Mr. Grumbine solicits an endowment fund to be set apart 
for the establishment and maintenance of the College and 
Order of The White Rose. Set aside in your will such a trust 
fund to be used by him for the advancement of this great 
work. 



What "The System of Philosophy 
Concerning Divinity" Can Do 

Its Relation to Spiritualism, Theosophy and the New Thought. 

Let it be known to all the world, and to students of psychic 
research and unfoldment once for all, that Spiritualism is 
True, is a Fact, admitted to be such not only by the great and 
powerful Catholic Church, but by the most eminent scientists, 
— Sir Oliver Lodge, Cammille Flammarion Alfred \Y a ^ ace > 
Sir William Crookes, Signer Lombroso, W. T. Stead, the late 
Frederick Meyer and Dr. Hodgson and Professors James, Hy- 
slop, Rev. M. J. Savage, and numerous other leaders in Chem- 
istry, psychology, physics, literature and the church. 

The next step to settle is the unfoldment of our own powers. 

Our psychical powers can be arranged into two distinct 
kinds. By powers we mean our ability or capacity to hold 
communion with the spirit world, function on the psychical or 
supernormal plane, obtain intromission to celestial knowledge 
and mysteries, and see clairvoyant ly, hear clairaudiently, 
feel clairsentiently, become a seer, both in the normal, super- 
normal and spiritual sense, and, in short, exercise all the oc- 
cult powers which hitherto have been regarded as impossible. 

One psychical power which is used mostly by spiritualist 
mediums is Mediumship. This is an organic function which 
few indeed possess — not one out of fifty thousand. It is a 
power which can be unfolded by negation under spirit obses- 
sions. It is not advisable to unfold it in all cases, or when it is 
present only in a fragmentary form. It oftens leads one, if 
not unfolded by an expert, to insanity. Merely sitting in the 
dark and becoming negative is not sufficient. But enough 
has been said to warn the ignorant not to "rush in where 
angels fear to tread." 

The other kind is the Supernormal, and we cannot emphasize 
too strongly the fact that all possess supernormal powers. 

Our supernormal powers are not mediumship. We are con- 
scious, free, independent, when we become supernormal. The 
supernormal powers are clear seeing or clairvoyance, clear 



hearing or clairaudience, clear feeling or clairsentience, seer- 
ship, prevision, psychometry, intuition, realization, illumi- 
nation, healing, reverie, ecstacy, telepathy, thought tranr* 
ference, inspiration, projection of the double, functioning on 
the astral plane consciously. These we all can unfold — some 
to a greater degree than others, because they will spend more 
time and be more earnest in their efforts. 

Now, should anyone say that these powers cannot be un- 
folded we call your particular attention to those whose names 
are subscribed to our circular letter, who with many others 
who have taken Mr. Grumbine's System, yet know that what 
we claim is true, and will be pleased to testify to what we here 
write. Of course, where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise, 
and so the least said to the prejudiced or the ignorant the ' 
better. What we claim can be done is being done by the . 
System, and your testimony will be added when you study the 
profound but simple System which Mr. Grumbine received as 
a revelation from the spiritual ''Order of the White Rose" on 
the spirit side of life and which he also discovered and proved 
in himself as possible and practical. 

Take Theosophy : it affords the initiated or inner circle an . 
esoteric teaching, and we have received word from those who 
have taken this work that the System taught at* 'The College 
of Divine Sciences and Realization" by Mr. Grumbine is superi- 
or in many ways to the esoteric theosophical teaching. The 
language is far less Sanscritty and stuffed with orientalisms, 
while his methods are more scientific and practical and adapt- 
ed to the western mind. One physician who took the System 
years ago, and went into Theosophy, returned years afterward 
to remark that Mr. Grumbine's System is the System par ex- 
cellence. He was sorry he ever took any other System. 

And so it can be said of New Thought, which is a rehash -of 
Spiritualism, Theosophy and Divine Science without the inte- 
gral advantages of either and with the ideal and blessings of all 
three lost in confusion of words, of personal theories and cults 
of indifferent interest and value. 

In reference to Spiritualism, we have only this to say: 
What spiritualists think Spirituah^m is differs widely from 
what Spiritualism really is. This is acknowledged by the 
very best teachers in the movement. But here in Mr. Grum- 
bine's System is pure Spiritualism, presented in a way to ap- 
peal to the best in the ranks and the best in the world, to all 



who feel that Spiritualism is true, if we could only eliminate 
the bogus and the fraudulent, the mean, low, selfish and 
coarse out of the equation altogether. And here in his System 
the way is shown to higher Spiritualism which is rapidly sup- 
planting the low forms of it which have brought the movement 
into disrepute. 

Mediumship is not condemned nor undervalued, but with a 
pure and enlightened character added to it becomes redeemed 
from its degeneracy. Those who cannot or do not feel led to 
unfold their fragmentary mediumship or who have failed, are 
shown how to unfold that which is better, and which still al- 
lows them to retain their consciousness, their will, their free- 
dom, and yet function on the supernormal plane and receive 
sweet communion and comforting communications from their 
departed loved ones. 

This is why we advise you to become our student and apply 
our System and reap now the spiritual benefits of so great arid 
noble a knowledge which the System affords of the spirit and 
spiritual world, your place in it, your own immortality and the 
wisdom which your own unfolded inspiration and illumination 
will bring you. 

For free delineation, prospectus and catalogue of books, 
send stamped addressed envelope to J. C. F. Grumbine, B. D., 
(Fellow of the Society of Science, Letters and Arts, London, 
England), B. B. P. O., Boston, Mass. 



The Order of the White Rose 
Publications 

J. C. F. GRUMBINE, Founder-President 

(INSTITUTED IN 1893) 

"The Order of the White Rose" is an occult and mystic 
organization numbering many members in the new and old 
world. It is Rosicrucian, and is associated with a kindred 
organization on the spirit side of life. The Order on the spirit 
side of life assists and co-operates with the members on this 
side in doing the work of the spirit, unfolding the psychical 
powers independently, consciously and with due regard to the 
free, sane, healthy and spiritual life of its members. Indeed, 
they render material, and spiritual help whenever necessary, 
and assist the earth members in attaining a high degree of de- 
velopment in Spiritual force and powers. 

The books published by the Order are inspired, and prove in- 
spiration by revealing teachings which are not to be found else- 
where concerning the method of unfolding psychical powers. 
(The Order was called into existence for this purpose.) The 
proof is in the books and teachings themselves. 

These teachings are original, hence have been copied and 
plagarized by numerous new thought and occult writers, 
without giving credit where credit is due, who have claimed 
for their works original thought, whereas it is clear from whence 
they derived their garbled, unauthoritative teachings. Make 
no mistake in securing the original works which are the gen- 
uine and authentic writings of "The Order of the White Rose" 
and its representatives and evangels on earth. Mr. Grum- 
bine wrote the first work on the Science and Philosophy of 
Clairvoyance, Sensitiveness and Inspiration ever written, and 
the priority of his copyrights in date of time proves this state- 
ment. All truth is inspiring and helpful, but beware of those 
who write to sell and not to teach. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 

(Third Edition) 
BY J C. F. GRUMBINE. 

Since the publication of Emanuel Swedenborg's books, no 
more helpful, valuable work has appeared than the one en- 
titled "Clairvoyance: Its Nature and Law of Unfoldment," 
by J. C. F. Grumbine. It is a system of inspired teachings 
concerning Divinity, especially Clairvoyance, and how to un- 
fold the clairvoyant vision, to pierce the veil of sense, see and 
converse with spirits, enter at will into the spiritual world, 
and become a seer and an adept in this branch of mystical 
•science 

RECENT BOOK NOTICES. 

"Mr. Grumbine has clearly and logically presented his sub- 
ect in a manner at once simple and profound." — Suggestion. 

"Your work is marvelous, epoch-making." — Lillian Whit- 
ing, Boston, correspondent to Chicago Inter- Ocean 

"I consider the book on Clairvoyance a most remarkable 
and practical work on development. It harmonizes well 
with the Hermetic schools of Philosophy, in which I learned 
the mysteries of adept ship." — Prof. George W. Walrond, 
Astrologer. 

"It is the best work on the subject of Clairvoyance thus far, 
and points out an alluring goal of true spiritual development," 
— Mind, New York City. 

"There has recently appeared in print an important and 
most instructive volume on 'Clairvoyance: Its Nature and 
Law of Unfoldment,' from the truly inspired pen of our gifted 
brother, J. C. F. Grumbine, who writes as the exponent of the 
Spiritual Order of the White Rose. The lessons which consti- 
tute the volume are of great use and interest to all who desire 
to familiarize themselves both with the clearest scientific 
view of Clairvoyance yet presented to the reading public, and 
the most efficacious means of developing the faculty in them- 
selves by means of a series of simple and very practical ex- 
periments, which many of Mr. Grumbine' s students in various 
places have found highly beneficial in many ways, besides 



being conducive to attaining the central object for which they 
are designed. All sincere students of the psychic realm will 
do well to read and study this excellent volume." — W. J. 
Colville. 

Published in blue and green cloth and sold on order through 
all bookstalls or an authorized representative of the Rosicru- 
cians — The Order of the White Rose. Prce $1 . 50. 

"Easy Lessons in Occult Sciences," by J. C. F. Grumbine, is 
a neat book containing much very helpful knowledge not 
found elsewhere, on how to proceed to unfold the independent 
psychical powers without going into a trance or becoming 
obsessed. It is a textbook for beginners who contemplate 
making the most of themselves, both in a human and a divine 
sense, and who realize that failure in the world is mostly due 
to not knowing how to lay hold of all of one's powers which lie 
dormant within us, in standing in one's own bright light. 
There is a gold mine in such knowledge if one cares to invest 
the small price to learn the secret. Price 50 cents. 

"Psychometry," by the same author, is a simple but pro- 
found exposition of this most fascinating subject, put before 
the reader in language which is both clear and dignified, and 
which opens the eyes to the inner spheres of the soul and the 
law for the expression of this soul-power called sensitiveness 
or soul-measurement. Any one with this book can unfold 
this psychometric power. Price 50 cents. 

"Auras and Colors," by the same author, is a very readable 
book, and inasmuch as the book is now in its eighth thousand r 
proves its value as an original contribution on this very 
occult subject. How to see the aura, how to know the signifi- 
cance of the colors one vibrates, how to place them and the 
spirit who manifests them, how to catalogue all colors correct- 
ly, what colors to wear, is here briefly and concisely explained. 
This is a busy man's book. Secure this valuable work and 
you will learn the subject from one who sees auras and knows 
their meaning, is an expert on auras, and is not writing of what 
others say or think they see. It has stood the test and is re- 
ceiving a larger sale and welcome than any other similar work 
published in years. Price 50 cents. 

"The Great Secret and Other Occult Tales," by Mr. Grum- 
bine, is a series of short stories on Spiritualism, ghost stories 
founded on facts, and stranger than fiction. "The Great 
Secret", tells prospective man or woman to marry, how to pro- 



-duce children who will be angels rather than demons, by a law 
which science will sooner or later recognize. The other stories 
are: "Ghosts in the Wnite Tower," "The Coach and the 
Strange Driver," "A Bit of Old Boston," and "Mrs. Winder- 
mere's Country House." Price 50 cents. 

"Realization." by Miss Loraine Follet, the brilliant secre- 
tary of "The Order of the White Rose," is a most helpful work 
for beginners in the new thought and in Spiritualism, and 
those, too, who are seeking to rationalize and penetrate their 
occult and psychical experiences. It is written in a clear, 
readable style, and in a forcible and convincing manner. 
Price 50 cents 

"Telepathy," a new book, in handsome cloth covers, by 
Mr. Grumbine", which will appear about July or later, will sell 
for $1.50. It will prove, as has never before been done, the 
origin of thought, how we are all inspired, how spirits telepath 
their thoughts to mortals and each other, how we can trans- 
late our thoughts to each other as do the Zanzigs; in short, it 
will be the one book the student will seek for in the midst of 
the numerous works on this subject, which, while interesting, 
yet have been very unsatisfying. It will explain the tele- 
pathic code or how to transfer thoughts. It will show that 
Spiritualism explains telepathy and not telepathy Spiritualism. 
Send in now your subscriptions for it and so secure a copy with 
Mr. Grumbine' s autograph. Price 50 cents. 

"Genuine Evidences of Spirit Identity," proof of Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning's guidance of J. C. F. Grumbine by indis- 
putable evidence. Price 50 cents. 

"Universal Religion and Its Relation to Spiritism and 
Spiritualism." Price 50 cents. 



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